Kerrs Patent Revolver

Kerr's Patent Revolver
Type	Revolver
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Service history
Used by	Confederate States
Production history
Designer	James Kerr
Designed	1855
Manufacturer	London Armoury Company
Unit cost	$18.00
Produced	1859–1866
Specifications
Length	12.25 in (311 mm)
Barrel length	5 in (130 mm)
Caliber	.36 and .44 in (9.1 and 11.2 mm)
Action	single action, cylinder rotates if trigger is pulled while hammer is down but the gun must be cocked manually in order for it to fire.
Feed system	5 round cylinder

Kerr's Patent Revolver was an unusual 5-shot single-action revolver manufactured from 1859 to 1866 by the London Armoury Company. It was used by Confederate cavalrymen during the U.S. Civil War. Seven of these revolvers were held by the New Zealand Colonial Defence Force in 1863 and were issued to the famous Forest Rangers at the start of the campaign to push Maori rebels out of the Auckland province. It is easily recognized by its side-mounted hammer.

James Kerr had been the foreman for the Deane, Adams and Deane gun factory. Robert Adams, one of the partners and inventor of the Adams revolver, was Kerr's cousin. Kerr developed an improvement to the Adams revolver, British Patent No. 1722 of July 28, 1855, and when Adams left the Deane brothers to found the London Armoury Company on February 9, 1856, Kerr went with him. The London Armoury Company manufactured military rifles and revolvers. Kerr designed rifles for the company based on the 1853 pattern Enfield rifled musket. When the company directors decided to focus on rifle production in 1859 Adams left, taking his revolver patents with him.

Kerr designed a new revolver in .36 caliber and .44 caliber (54 bore in British measurement). Production began in April 1859. The British government did not initially purchase the weapon and civilian sales were modest. All the New Zealand revolvers were 54 bore(gauge)or .44 calibre.

However, the U.S. Civil War began in 1860 and the governments of both the United States and the Confederacy began purchasing arms in Britain. In November 1861, 1,600 revolvers were purchased for the Union army, at $18.00 apiece. However Confederate arms buyers Maj. Caleb Huse and Cpt. James D. Bulloch contracted for all the rifles and revolvers the Armoury could produce (and the Confederate government could pay for). As a result, the London Armoury Company became a major arms supplier to the Confederacy, selling the most of the 11,000 Kerr revolvers produced to Huse. The Kerr revolvers sold to the Confederacy were said by William Edwards in his book Civil War Guns to be those between serial numbers 3,000 and 10,000, but earlier serial numbers are thought by collectors to have also been shipped to the South, and there are no good records to show the exact number sold to the Confederate buyers.

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Wikipedia