Tolley 1.125 inch pentagonal rifle

[cannonmn]

Every few years I make another try at finding out something about this weapon.  Here we go again.  Please help, not even Google has been able to come up with anything on any Tolley cannon.  I suspect in England this rifled bore size would be called a "one pounder."

Length overall 32.25 in. 
Length over trunnions 5.5 in. 
Max dia. at breech 2.4 in. 
Muzzle O.D.  1.66 in. 
Trunnion dia. 1.05 in. 
Trunnion Length 1.1 in. 
Length of Trunnion Band 2.12 in. 
Measurement of bore taken from flat to opposite corner 1.125 in.
Material of construction:  Steel, as far as I can tell
Form of rifling:  "Whitworth" polygonal type, but with 5 sides, not 6.

Stamped or engraved on top of barrel ahead of trunnion band, one line "J & W Tolley Makers St. Mary's Square Birmingham."

Not visible in photos is a transverse hole 0.5 in. dia. through the cascabel for an elevating screw.  It has been fired because the barrel has slipped back somewhat in the shrunk-on unthreaded trunnion band, from recoil.  Tolley was a top-quality gun maker and would not have sold a gun with a manufacturing defect like that.  Perhaps this defect caused the piece to be retired from whatever service it was in.

Provenance:  Collection of late Hampton P. Howell Jr. of Charlottesville, VA.

References:  Countless references exist in form of catalogs listing sporting guns and rifles made by J & W Tolley, earliest advertisement I've found is dated 1861.  This weapon mentioned in one of Ed Olmstead et al books simply as a known example, reflecting the information I sent him.  Unfortunately he didn't know anything about it either.

 

[KABAR2]

John,

doing a search on Tolley I discovered that he used Alex Henry rifling doing a search on Alex Henry to find
what rifling he designed I discovered some modern muzzle loaders using this and they were associating
it also with Whitworth maybe there more info to be found searching on Henry.
At the bottom of the page is a sample of the Henry rifling.

Perhaps the cannon rifling is an early experamentation on this..

http://www.euroarms.net/euroarms_netWhitworth_file/whitworth_and_volunteer_rifles.htm

[Starr 2011]

Cannonmn

I guess that you have had these answers before:

At first glance it looks like a mid-19th century “punt gun”, attached to the prow of a boat and used to hunt geese. But the polygon rifling makes a nonsense of that.

Otherwise it resembles a “camel gun”, a small piece secured to the bow of a saddle. Such guns were widely used from the 16th to the 19th centuries in support of horsed cavalry in the armies of the Indian princes and the British army. See attached picture.

The Tolley advertisements of 1862 note that they supply “all guns suitable for African Markets”, so it might be a “wall piece” for a colonial fort – effectively the same size of as a camel gun.

All these small artillery pieces had the advantage of being able to be proved at the Birmingham Proof House for guns and rifles rather than at Woolwich.

Hope this helps

Starr

[KABAR2]

Cannonmn

I guess that you have had these answers before:

At first glance it looks like a mid-19th century “punt gun”, attached to the prow of a boat and used to hunt geese. But the polygon rifling makes a nonsense of that.

Otherwise it resembles a “camel gun”, a small piece secured to the bow of a saddle. Such guns were widely used from the 16th to the 19th centuries in support of horsed cavalry in the armies of the Indian princes and the British army. See attached picture.

The Tolley advertisements of 1862 note that they supply “all guns suitable for African Markets”, so it might be a “wall piece” for a colonial fort – effectively the same size of as a camel gun.

All these small artillery pieces had the advantage of being able to be proved at the Birmingham Proof House for guns and rifles rather than at Woolwich.

Hope this helps

Starr

If the accuracy was equal to the Whitworth I doubt it would have been a swivel gun...

on a sutable carriage it would prove useful for anti-battery work on the battlefield.

[Cannoneer]

I did find a reference to a J & W Tolley 4 bore punt gun, but these were break open breech loaders that fired shot shells. Didn't find a picture of a Tolley, but this is a photo of a J. D. Dougal 4 bore made c. 1870 that I think would be similar.

Photo   Bing Images


James Tolley was evidently an entrepreneur open to new ideas, because he got into bicycle manufacturing in the 1890's.
Notice than in the advertisement it states that they are Contractors to H. M. Government, and to Foreign and Colonial Governments.
http://mercuryindustries.wordpress.com/other-mercury-bicycles/

Unfortunately I couldn't turn up a thing connecting this company to any cannon.

[Starr 2011]

A few more factoids relating to the pentagonal gun:

Whitworth’s 1855 patent for polygonal (not just his own hex-bored) rifling expired in 1869. He vigorously defended his rights, suppressing Westley Richards octagonal bored rifle in the mid-1850s, so it’s likely to have been made in the 1870s. The Tolleys (there were three active gun makers in the firm, founded in 1859) held six firearm patents dating from 1877 until 1884, all were to do with sporting guns, not ordnance. But the firm had a reputation for big-bore “punt guns”.

Cannoneer: Another type of J D Dougall gun had US Patent 49844 of September 5, 1865. It was originally patented in Britain a couple of years prior for use as a “camel gun” or a “wall piece”. Attached is a drawing from the patent. Not too sure about firing it from a tripod!

I would guess that the Tolley piece was a “camel gun” for colonial use.

PS Cannonmn, the hole in the cascabel is probably to enable it to be carried hanging vertically from a horizontal rod between the shoulders of two man-bearers.

[cannonmn]

Thanks for the info, I just caught up with the last few posts and they are interesting.  I looked up the patent Starr found and the description discusses the potential uses of the piece.  The similarity to mine is pretty clear also, the trunnion band in particular.  The big difference of course is that the Dougal piece is breechloading, but otherwise it is very similar.  Here's a link to the full patent on Google patents, which only takes a few seconds to find if you have the patent number:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=UToAAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA1&dq=49844&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false