Help with British regiment marking

[Theodor]

Hi guys, this marking - LT 34 REG 51 - is found on a British 19th century gun... musket... something like that... /it is marked Tower 1848 on the mechanism/.

So, can you please tell me the meaning of this marking, which is that regiment, etc.... Thank you very much in advance!

Edited February 24, 2007 by Theodor

[leigh kitchen]

34th (Cumberland) Regiment of Foot (amalgamated 1881 with 55th (Westmoreland) Regiment of Foot to form The Border Regiment)..

I believe that the markings stand for the 51st weapon of the Light Company, 34th Regiment.

[Theodor]

Thank you very much, Leigh!! A few letters, but giving lots of history to the gun!

Though still do not know what exactly it is - a late model "Brown Bess", an early Enfield or what... The WW2 guns are much easier to identify

[peter monahan]

Thank you very much, Leigh!! A few letters, but giving lots of history to the gun!

Though still do not know what exactly it is - a late model "Brown Bess", an early Enfield or what... The WW2 guns are much easier to identify

Theodor

What you have there is an Pattern 1842 Musket, the last issue produced by the British Army before switching to the Snider-Enfield (a conversion of the old Brown Besses to breechloaders).

The 1842 was widely used throughout the Empire and imported by both sides in the US Civil War. It was, as I say, the intermediate step between flintlock muzzle-loader and breech-loading percussion. The "Tower" marking means the lock was made at the Tower of London armouries or another government armoury.

(Often, stocks and barrels were married to locks by civilians contractors, many of whom clustered arond the Tower. Hence the expression "lock, stock and barrel", meaning "the whole thing")

Ther is one of these on sale on a US site for $600.00US, semmingly in about the same condition as yours.

[peter monahan]

There should be a small hook under the barrel to secure the bayonet. Any sign that there was once one there?

BTW, agree with Leigh about the markings: Light Coy of the 34th

Peter

[Theodor]

Thank you veru much, Peter! The bayo hook is missing, there is a place for it on the bronze part near the end of the barrel, but no hook. I think it is not that difficult to make, though... work for the summer

[Theodor]

Speaking of Tower and conversions, here is something interesting that I got recently, an Enfield Snider produced for the Turkish army.

Here it is: http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=15075

/just noticed I've written Snyder... but it's Snider/.

[peter monahan]

Although I never managed to own one, I always liked the Snider-Enfield! (I got a Martini Henry instead, the first "real" breechloader, as opposed to conversion.)

One of Rudyard Kipling's "Soldiers Three" said that loading his Snider was "as easy as feeding a monkey nuts", and as a long time muzzleloader owner (I have and fire a Brown Bess), the phrase sticks in my head!

The Snider's eventually went almost everywhere on the globe, I believe, along with thousands of Brown Besses: poorer armies like the Sultan's, as trade guns to Africa and anywhere that black powder was available. Sniders will chamber a 12 gauge shotgun shell, or so I've been told on good authority, so apparently were popular with Canadian natives as cheap cheap hunting guns.

Hang onto that Pattern '42, Theodor, it's a very nice piece!

[Theodor]

Speaking of Martini, I have a few of them. None is perfect, but two are very good /and the Mauser converted one is close to excellent... if only the front wood was not cut!!!/

Here are some photos:

http://gmic.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1559...mp;#entry152439

And here are the babies