William Cantelo (born 1830) was a 19th-century British inventor. Credited with developing an early

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) ar ...

, he disappeared from his home in

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

in the 1880s. While trying to find Cantelo, his two sons saw a photograph of American-born inventor

Hiram Maxim Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (5 February 1840 – 24 November 1916) was an American- British inventor best known as the creator of the first automatic machine gun, the Maxim gun. Maxim held patents on numerous mechanical devices such as hair-curl ...

(born 1840), creator of the

Maxim gun The Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim. It was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian ...

; his superficial similarity to their father led them to believe that he had re-emerged under a new name.

Background

Cantelo was born in 1830 at Newport on the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a Counties of England, county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the List of islands of England#Largest islands, largest and List of islands of England#Mo ...

to parents Elizabeth and William Cantelo. His father was a publican and brush maker. His brother, John, and one of his sisters, Ellen, were artists. Cantelo became an engineer and, in the 1870s, owned a shop on French Street in Southampton and a yard in Northam, employing up to 40 people. He was also the landlord of the Old Tower Inn at the end of Bargate Street which derived its name from the Arundel Tower against which it was built. Beneath the pub was a tunnel where Cantelo spent much of his time, turning it into an underground workshop. Cantelo was married with three children – a daughter and two sons. He was a keen musician and the bandmaster of the old 2nd Hampshires.

Invention

The development of new, rapid-firing guns was becoming a hotly contested area for inventors. The military of countries across the world were looking to secure the most powerful weapons, and there was great potential for an inventor to secure a highly profitable government contract. Machine guns were first used during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

, and the Gatling gun,

Nordenfelt gun The Nordenfelt gun was a multiple-barrel organ gun that had a row of up to twelve barrels. It was fired by pulling a lever back and forth and ammunition was gravity fed through chutes for each barrel. It was produced in a number of different ...

, and

Gardner gun The Gardner gun was an early type of mechanical machine gun. It had one, two or five barrels, was fed from a vertical magazine or hopper and was operated by a crank. When the crank was turned, a feed arm positioned a cartridge in the breech, the ...

had all started gaining popularity. Cantelo wanted his own stake in the revolution. Cantelo used the tunnel underneath the Old Tower Inn for his experiments and was later joined by his two sons, both engineers themselves. Locals reported hearing noises coming from the vicinity, but the family kept their work a closely guarded secret. In the early 1880s Cantelo announced the gun's completion to his family.

Disappearance

Accounts differ regarding the nature of Cantelo's disappearance. Some reports say that he went for an extended holiday as a reward for his hard work or might have gone off to sell his finished invention. It is also claimed that a large sum of Cantelo's money had been transferred out of his bank account after his disappearance. Cantelo's family tried to find William, but with no real success. They employed a private investigator, who traced him to America but could not find out anything more.

Subsequent rumours and speculations

An American inventor,

, had moved to London from the United States in 1881 and perfected a rapid-fire machine gun. Cantelo's two sons happened across a photograph of Maxim, whose similarity to their father led them to believe that he was still alive and had assumed a new identity. Descriptions of the gun sounded similar to the one they had worked on. The sons tried to challenge Maxim, but he wanted nothing to do with them. He sold the

to the British government. The name "Maxim", the family claimed, was evidence that Cantelo had assumed this new identity. Fond of maxims, Cantelo often carried a book of such phrases in his pocket. Two witnesses also claim that Cantelo referred to his invention as "my maxim gun". The family's belief that Cantelo re-emerged under a new identity is inconsistent with accounts of Maxim's early life. Born in 1840, Maxim became a carriage maker's apprentice at the age of 14. He developed an interest in inventions and obtained 271 patents, the first of which came in 1866. An episode of ''

Punt PI ''Punt PI'' is a fact-based comedy radio series on BBC Radio 4 in which Steve Punt investigates mysteries in Britain. Format Each episode is 30 minutes long and there are three or four episodes in each series. Starting with series two, every ep ...

'', a

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

series, covered the Cantelo story with

Steve Punt Stephen Mark Punt (born 15 September 1962)Mr Stephen Mark Punt
company-director-c ...

investigating Cantelo's disappearance. He discovered that Maxim had complained about a man who was impersonating him in the United States. He also showed a photograph of Cantelo next to his machine gun to the

Royal Armouries The Royal Armouries is the United Kingdom's national collection of arms and armour. Originally an important part of England's military organization, it became the United Kingdom's oldest museum, originally housed in the Tower of London from ...

, who stated that the weapon appeared to be the same as the Maxim gun. A facial expert who compared the images of Cantelo and Maxim highlighted that there were visible differences between the two men. Punt cast doubt on the idea that Cantelo and Maxim were the same person but noted the coincidences.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cantelo, William 1830 births 1880s missing person cases English inventors Firearm designers Missing person cases in England People from Newport, Isle of Wight Year of death unknown

Background

Invention

Disappearance

Subsequent rumours and speculations

See also

References