The Martini–Henry is a breech-loading single-shot rifle with a lever action that was used by the British Army. It first entered service in 1871, eventually replacing the Snider–Enfield, a muzzle-loader converted to the cartridge system. Martini–Henry variants were used throughout the British Empire for 47 years. It combined the dropping-block action first developed by Henry O. Peabody (in his Peabody rifle) and improved by the Swiss designer Friedrich von Martini, combined with the polygonal rifling designed by Scotsman Alexander Henry.
Though the Snider was the first breechloader firing a metallic cartridge in regular British service, the Martini was designed from the outset as a breechloader and was both faster firing and had a longer range.
The Martini–Henry was copied on a large scale by North-West Frontier Province gunsmiths. Their weapons were of a poorer quality than those made by Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, but accurately copied down to the proof markings. The chief manufacturers were the Adam Khel Afridi, who lived around the Khyber Pass. The British called such weapons "Pass-made rifles".
Overview
Ammunition In the original chambering, the rifles fired a round-nosed, tapered-head .452-inch, soft hollow-based lead bullet, wrapped in a paper patch giving a wider diameter of .460 to .469-inch; it weighed 485 grains. It was crimped in place with two cannelures (grooves on the outside neck of the case), ahead of two fibre card or mill board disks, a concave beeswax wad, another card disk and cotton wool filler. This sat on top of the main powder charge inside, initially a rimmed brass foil cartridge, later made in drawn brass.
The cartridge case was paper lined so as to prevent the chemical reaction between the black powder and the brass. Known today as the .577/450, a bottle-neck design with the same base as the .577 cartridge of the Snider–Enfield. It was charged with 85 grains (5.51 g) of Curtis and Harvey's No.6 coarse black powder, notorious for its heavy recoil. The cartridge case was ejected to the rear when the lever was operated.
Rifle design and dimensions The rifle was long, the steel barrel . The Henry patent rifling produced a heptagonal barrel with seven grooves with one turn in . The weapon weighed . A sword bayonet was standard issue for non-commissioned officers; when fitted, the weapon extended to and weight increased to .
The standard bayonet was a socket-type spike, either converted from the older Pattern 1853 (overall length ) or newly produced as the Pattern 1876 (overall length ), referred to as the "lunger". A bayonet designed by Lord Elcho was intended for chopping and other sundry non-combat duties, and featured a double row of teeth so it could be used as a saw; it was not produced in great numbers and was not standard issue.
Sights, accuracy, and performance The Mk II Martini–Henry rifle, the most numerous modification adopted in 1877, as used in the Zulu Wars, was sighted to . At , 20 shots exhibited a mean deflection from the centre of the group of , the highest point on the trajectory was at . In 1879, Mk III rifle was adopted, which had minor design updates as well as more interchangeable parts with Martini-Henry carbine.
Ammunition development and replacements In late 1870s British military was looking forward to unify ammunition for its rifles and machine guns (they were both .45 caliber, but different cartridges). The .577/.450 turned out to be poorly suited to the hopper feed as well as existing box magazines due to a very pronounced bottleneck, so in 1881 the Gatling cartridge was tried in Martini-Henry rifles.
However, in parallel developing a new cartridge with a lighter approximately .4 inch bullet was considered since 1880, and after its design was settled on in 1885 a new variant of the rifle for it was approved in April 1886, designated Enfield-Martini .4-inch Pattern A.
It incorporated several minor improvements such as a safety catch, was gradually phased in to replace the Martini–Henry with over 21000 produced overall. The replacement was planned to be gradual, to use up existing stocks of the old ammunition. A year later a modified Pattern B was approved with tens of thousands more produced.
However, before this was complete, the decision was made to replace the Martini–Henry rifles with the .303 calibre bolt-action magazine Lee–Metford, which gave a considerably higher maximum rate of fire. Consequently, to avoid having three different rifle calibres in service, the Enfield–Martinis were withdrawn, converted to 0.45 calibre, and renamed Martini–Henry Mk IV "A", "B" and "C" pattern rifles. Some 0.303 calibre black-powder carbine versions were also produced, known as the Martini–Metford, and even 0.303 calibre cordite carbines, called Martini–Enfields (the former name for the type of action and the latter name for the pattern of rifling).
Service use During the Martini–Henry's service life the British Army was involved in a large number of colonial wars, most notably the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879. The rifle was used in the Battle of Isandlwana, and by the company of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot at the battle of Rorke's Drift, where 139 British soldiers successfully defended themselves against several thousand Zulus. The weapon was not completely phased out until 1904.
Variants The Martini-Henry carbine represented a more compact and lightweight iteration of the distinguished British Martini-Henry rifle, specifically engineered for personnel training. This design prioritized reduced weight and recoil while maintaining the inherent single-shot, falling-block action.
Artillery carbines used a lighter .577/450 cartridge load, typically a 410-grain projectile instead of the 480-grain infantry bullet, reducing recoil for rapid handling.
Carbine-specific cavalry design features included a shortened barrel, an abbreviated ladder-style rear sight graduated to about 1,000 yards, and a reduced-power loading firing a 410-grain bullet of the .577/450 caliber, which was lighter than the standard rifle load, lessening recoil and making repeated firing more manageable. Some models were issued with specialized sword bayonets, such as the Yataghan-style, allowing cavalrymen to use their firearms in close combat.
Later ammunition and civilian use The nitro based/shotgun powders were used in Kynoch's .577/450 drawn-brass Martini–Henry cartridge cases well into the 1960s for the commercial market, and again were found to be very reliable and, being smokeless, eliminated fouling issues. The powder's burning with less pressure inside the cartridge case prevented the brass cases from sticking inside the rifle's chamber (because they were not expanding as much as the original black-powder loads did).
Competitive shooting The rifle remained a popular competition rifle at National Rifle Association meetings, at Bisley, Surrey, and (NRA) Civilian and Service Rifle matches from 1872 to 1904, where it was used up to 1,000 yards using the standard military service ammunition of the day. By the 1880s the .577/.450 Boxer Henry round was recognised by the NRA as a 900-yard cartridge, as shooting the Martini out to 1,000 yards ( of a mile) was difficult. It took great skill to assess the correct amount of elevation and windage to drop the 485 grain bullet on target at that range. But by 1904 more target shooters were using the new .303 cal. cartridge, which was found to be much more accurate, and thus interest in the .577/450 fell away, to the point that by 1909 they were rarely used at Bisley matches, with shooters favouring the later Lee–Enfield bolt action magazine rifles.
Ballistics and battlefield effectiveness In 1879, however, it was generally found that in average hands the .577/450 Martini–Henry Mk2, although the most accurate of the Martinis in that calibre ever produced for service life, was really only capable of hitting a man-size target out to 400 yards. This was due to the bullet going subsonic after 300 yards and gradually losing speed thereafter, which in turn affected consistency and accuracy of the bullet in flight.
The 415-grain Martini Carbine load introduced in 1878 shot better out to longer ranges and had less recoil when it was fired in the rifles, with its reduced charge of only 75 grains of Curtis & Harvey's. It was found that, while the rifle with its 485 grain bullet shot point of aim to 100 yards, the carbine load when fired in the rifles shot high at the same range, but then made up for this by shooting spot-on out to .
These early lessons enabled tactics to be evolved to work around the limitations of this large, slow, and heavy calibre during the Zulu War. During most of the key battles, such as Rorke's Drift and the Battle of Ulundi, the order to volley fire was not given until the Zulus were at or within 400 yards.
The ballistic performance of a .577/450 is somewhat similar to that of an American .45/70 Government round, as used prolifically throughout the American Frontier West and by buffalo hunters, though the .577/450 has more power due to its extra 15 grains of black powder inside the cartridge case. It is clear from early medical field surgeons' reports that at 200 yards the rifle really came into its own, and inflicted devastating wounds on the Zulus in the Anglo–Zulu War. The MK2 Martini's sights are marked to 1,800 yards, but this setting was only ever used for long-range mass volley firing to harass an artillery position or a known massed cavalry position, prior to a main fight, and to prevent or delay infantry attacks.
A similar "drop volley sight" whereby the rifle's bullets were dropped long range onto the target was employed on the later .303 Lee–Enfield rifles of WW1, which had a graduation lever sight calibrated up to 2,800 yards.
Foreign production and variants The Nepalese produced a close copy of the British Martini–Henry incorporating certain Westley Richards improvements to the trigger mechanism but otherwise very similar to the British Mark II. These rifles can be identified by their Nepalese markings and different receiver ring. A noticeably different variant incorporating earlier Westley Richards ideas for a flat-spring driven hammer within the receiver in lieu of the coil-spring powered striker of the von Martini design, known as the Gahendra rifle, was produced locally in Nepal.
While generally well-made, the rifles were produced substantially by hand, making the quality extremely variable. Though efforts were being made to phase out these rifles, presumably by the 1890s, some 9000 were still in service in 1906.
Later service The Martini–Henry saw service in World War I in a variety of roles, primarily as a Reserve Arm, but it was also issued (in the early stages of the war) to aircrew for attacking observation balloons with newly developed incendiary ammunition, and aircraft. Martini–Henrys were also used in the African and Middle Eastern theatres during World War I, in the hands of Native Auxiliary troops.
Greener shotgun A shotgun variant known as the Greener Police Gun, Greener EG (for "Egyptian Government"), or the Greener Prison Shotgun was chambered in a 14.5-gauge -inch (18×73mm) full-length brass shell used only by this gun. That would make the weapon useless to anyone who stole it, as no other cartridge could be loaded. It was used by prison guards and police in Egypt, Burma, India, and Australia. Over 60,000 had been produced by the time production ended in the 1960s.