Canadian Artillery: .45 calibre Gatling Gun

(Author Photo)

.45-calibre Gatling Battery Gun, Colt Fire Arms, (Serial No. 00). The Army Museum, Halifax Citadel National Historic Site, Cavalier Building (second floor), Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Richard Gatling invented the Gatling gun in 1861,and the first gun was produced a year later. It had six barrels and could fire at a rate of 200 shots per minute. The gun was used during the American Civil War, and was sold to a number of other countries including Russia, France, and Britain. The gun was produced in a number of calibers from half-inch to 1 inch, but by 1883 the majority were chambered for the standard American army .45/70 cartridge. A Gatling gun was used against Louis Riel’s Métis at the Battle of Batoche in 1885. Captain A.L. Howard, an American army officer who was under contract to the Colt Firearms Company, manned the gun. The gun was a model 1883.

The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling of North Carolina. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon.

The Gatling gun is centered on a cyclic multi-barrel design which facilitated cooling and synchronized the firing-reloading sequence. As the handwheel is cranked, the barrels rotate, and each barrel sequentially loads a single cartridge from a top-mounted magazine, fires off the shot when it reaches a set position (usually at 4 o’clock), then ejects the spent casing out of the left side at the bottom, after which the barrel is empty and allowed to cool until rotated back to the top position and gravity-fed another new round. This configuration eliminated the need for a single reciprocating bolt design and allowed higher rates of fire to be achieved without the barrels overheating quickly.

One of the best-known early rapid-firearms, the Gatling gun saw occasional use by the Union Army during the American Civil War, which was the first time it was employed in combat. It was later used in numerous military conflicts, including the Boshin War, the Anglo-Zulu War, and the assault on San Juan Hill during the Spanish–American War. It was also used by the Pennsylvania militia in episodes of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, specifically in Pittsburgh. Gatling guns were also mounted aboard ships. (Wikipedia)