The 'Volunteer' Rifle And The History Behind It

At Henry Krank, we have both the ‘two band’ and ‘three-band’ versions of the 'Volunteer' Rifle available by Parker Hale and Euroarms. These examples are sometimes called ‘Henry’ rifles after the type of rifling used, designed by Alexander Henry. You can view our full range of reproduction Volunteer Rifles here.

Although at a glance these look very much like the famous pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-musket there are subtle differences, to better understand these it is useful to know a little of the history behind the ‘volunteer rifle’ and those that used them.

During the mid-19th century a fresh wave of British patriotism and concern for the defense of the country resulted with the birth of the volunteer movement.

The British military had become somewhat stagnant during the long period of peace in Europe after the battle of Waterloo and had retained the flintlock ignition, India Pattern “Brown Bess” well into the percussion era. Even after they adopted the percussion system, they still retained the large caliber smoothbore musket as the standard line infantry weapon, while the rest of Europe was adopting rifled arms for general issue.

The French revolution of 1848 had made Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the great Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, the president of France. This unnerved European nations, including Britain, and for the first time since Waterloo, the likelihood of not just a war with France, but an invasion as well, seemed a very real possibility.

With a revived sense of nationalism, many young Englishmen followed the advice of the newspapers and pamphlets of the day and sought to join Volunteer Rifle organizations. These groups were primarily based around existing shooting clubs so naturally marksmanship became highly important to the Volunteers.

In their early days the Volunteer units armed themselves with many different types of military style arms, however the guns were often enhanced or had features that did not exactly conform to official military patterns and crucially were also of varying calibres. These organizations, much like pre-Civil War American militia companies, usually armed, equipped and uniformed themselves as they saw best, pretty much buying what weapons they could afford or desired. A personal favourite calibre to use was the .451.

On the 1st of January 1860 in an effort to standardize the arms of the volunteers, and because so many older Type I and Type II Pattern 1853 Enfields were available, the government agreed to supply all the Volunteer units with ‘Long Enfield Rifles’ (pattern 1853’s). Until this point the War Department would only issue a few rifles per unit, viewing the Volunteers more as private organisations than an official military unit. By 1862 just about all volunteer organizations were being offered refurbished Pattern 1853s.

With the adoption of the .577 Pattern 1853 Enfield the War Department also started to set out some rules and regulations for these Volunteer Rifle groups. The first major rule was that any privately purchased weapons would have to accept the standard government issued .577 cartridges. However, this still left a lot of room for interpretation in the type of “military style” rifle that the volunteers acquired, but the guns were at least all to be of uniform caliber, an essential for the logistics of any military organisation.

The large number of privately made weapons available for sale in the gun shops of London and Birmingham in the .577 military calibre still led to a variation of rifles acquired by the volunteers, with some guns being almost exact military patterns and some only vaguely resembling them. 

What we know today as the “Volunteer Rifle” was born in the wake of the adoption of both the standard .577 cartridge and the P53, in effect it was an enhanced pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-musket, or it’s shorter ‘two-band’ cousin, refined to meet the demands of the volunteer marksmen with uprated sights, sometimes a heavier barrel or different rifling, checkered stock to allow for a better grip as well as small tweaks to the lock, all to facilitate that increased accuracy craved by Volunteer units.

In 1870, these rifles would start to disappear as the Volunteer organisation adopted the Snider, and then the Martini-Henry in 1879. The issue of the Lee-Metford magazine rifle was authorised in 1895. In 1908 the Volunteer Force, merged with the Yeomanry to form the Territorial Force.

You can view our full range of reproduction Volunteer Rifles here.

A Firearms Licence is required to purchase.