British Brunswick Rifle
The Brunswick rifle was a large caliber (.704) muzzle-loading percussion rifle fabricated for the British Army at the Royal Small Arms manufacturing plant at Enfield in the early 1800s.
The Brunswick has a two groove gun barrel configured to take a belted round ball. There are four primary versions of the British Brunswick Rifle. This civil war rifle was designated to replace the Baker rifle and weighed from over 9 to over 10 pounds WITHOUT its bayonet bound. The rifle was reported as inaccurate and hard to load but continued in production for about 50 years (1836 to 1885)and was used by England and affiliated settlements and outposts throughout the world.
The rifle was loaded by laboriously forcing the girdled bullet on the two rifling ruts of the bore. This was highly time and energy consuming, and really hard to accomplish in midst of battle. Particularly at night it was virtually impossible to properly place the bullet girdle to the rifling grooves. In addition to this obstruction the bore could become fouled rather rapidly.
The first mass order of 1000 rifles was on October 25, 1837. In January of the following year, it became evident that the Enfield manufacturing plant wouldn’t be capable to provision them soon enough. Thus the entire order was assigned the trade in London at a cost of 38s per rifle. The Brunswick was as well constructed in Belgium. Limited numbers of Brunswick rifles were imported to the United States during the Civil War.