The Lancaster Pistol was a multi-barrelled (2 or 4 barrels) handgun produced in England in the mid-late 19th century, chambered in a variety of centrefire pistol calibres—chiefly .38 S&W,

.450 Adams The .450 Adams was a British black powder centrefire revolver cartridge, initially used in converted Beaumont–Adams revolvers, in the late 1860s. Officially designated .450 Boxer Mk I, and also known variously as the .450 Revolver, .450 Colt ...

.455 Webley .455 Webley is a British handgun cartridge, most commonly used in the Webley top break revolvers Marks I through VI. It is also known as ".455 Eley" and ".455 Colt". The .455 cartridge was a service revolver cartridge, featuring a rimmed car ...

, and .577 inch. The designer, London gunsmith Charles Lancaster, began his career in 1847 as an apprentice to his father, Charles Sr. During the 1850s he invented oval bore rifling and the gas check bullet.Lancaster pistols
/ref>

Description

It was a modernised version of the pepper-box pistol popular in the early-mid 19th century.Myatt, F, ''19th century firearms'' (London 1989) Unlike these earlier guns which had

percussion cap The percussion cap or percussion primer, introduced in the early 1820s, is a type of single-use percussion ignition device for muzzle loader firearm locks enabling them to fire reliably in any weather condition. This crucial invention gave rise ...

ignition, the Lancaster was chambered for the more modern brass cartridges. The unique oval rifling also enabled it to fire

.410 The .410 bore is one of the smallest caliber of shotgun shell commonly available (along with the 9mm Flobert rimfire cartridge, and the less common .22 rimfire shot shell). A .410 bore shotgun loaded with shot shells is well suited for small ...

shotgun shells. It had a faster rate of fire than the standard-issue Adams revolver and was often fitted with a Tranter-type trigger to overcome the heavy pull of the revolving striker. Sometimes classified as a

Howdah pistol The howdah pistol was a large-calibre handgun, often with two or four barrels, used in Africa and India from the beginning of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century during the British Empire era. It was intended for defence ...

, the Lancaster pistol enjoyed popularity with British officers in India and Africa during the

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...

owing to its faster rate of fire and increased reliability over contemporary revolvers. It was highly prized by hunters and explorers for close range defense against big game such as

tiger The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is the largest living cat species and a member of the genus ''Panthera''. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily preys on ...

s or cape buffalo. Unlike revolvers, it does not leak gas when fired since there is no gap between the chamber and the barrel. One rare variant, made for the

Maharajah of Rewa Rewa State, also known as Rewah, was a Rajput princely state of India, surrounding its eponymous capital, the town of Rewa. With an area of about , Rewa was the largest princely state in the Bagelkhand Agency and the second largest in Centra ...

as a hunting weapon, took the form of a

four barreled rifle A combination gun is a firearm that usually comprises at least one rifled barrel and one smoothbore barrel, that is typically used with shot or some types of shotgun slug. Most have been break-action guns, although there have been other design ...

Use in Sudan

Its ammunition had greater stopping power than the contemporary Beaumont–Adams and

Colt Navy The Colt Revolving Belt Pistol or Navy Pistol, sometimes erroneously referred to as "Colt Revolving Belt Pistol of Naval Caliber" or "of Navy Caliber" (Naval is heavy gun and Navy Size Caliber was termed later for another Colt model), is a cap an ...

revolvers, making it ideal for colonial warfare. When facing charging tribesmen like the

Zulus Zulu people (; zu, amaZulu) are a Nguni ethnic group native to Southern Africa. The Zulu people are the largest ethnic group and nation in South Africa, with an estimated 10–12 million people, living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Na ...

or Ansar (the so-called Sudanese

Dervish Dervish, Darvesh, or Darwīsh (from fa, درویش, ''Darvīsh'') in Islam can refer broadly to members of a Sufi fraternity (''tariqah''), or more narrowly to a religious mendicant, who chose or accepted material poverty. The latter usage i ...

es), more modern ammunition tended to go straight through the enemy who would keep going. What was needed was a heavy lead bullet that would lodge in their body and bring them down. One famous user was the photographer and film maker Lieutenant Colonel John Montague Benett Stanford (1870-1947), who killed a fanatical assegai-wielding Sudanese Ansar with a Lancaster pistol while working as a war correspondent at the

Battle of Omdurman The Battle of Omdurman was fought during the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan between a British–Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by British Commander-in-Chief ( sirdar) major general Horatio Herbert Kitchener and a Sudanese army of the ...

. It was eventually displaced by the various

Webley revolver The Webley Revolver (also known as the Webley Top-Break Revolver or Webley Self-Extracting Revolver) was, in various designations, a standard issue service pistol for the armed forces of the United Kingdom, and countries of the British Empire a ...

s in the late 19th century as revolvers became more reliable and faster to reload, thus removing many of the advantages of the multi-barrel design. A few were still in use as late as

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, and they were well known to be solidly built and easy to maintain.

In popular culture

A double-barreled Lancaster howdah pistol with a unique spring-loaded blade is the weapon of the

big-game hunter Big-game hunting is the hunting of large game animals for meat, commercially valuable by-products (such as horns/ antlers, furs, tusks, bones, body fat/oil, or special organs and contents), trophy/taxidermy, or simply just for recreation ...

Remington in ''

The Ghost and the Darkness ''The Ghost and the Darkness'' is a 1996 American historical adventure film directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. The screenplay, written by William Goldman, is a fictionalized account of the Tsavo man-eaters, ...

''.The guns that killed the man eaters of Tsavo
/ref> The Lancaster pistol exists as the Howdah Pistol in the 2016 video game '' Battlefield 1''.

References

{{Multiple Barrel Firearms Black-powder pistols Multiple-barrel firearms Pistols of the United Kingdom Victorian-era weapons of the United Kingdom Hunting equipment