Euroarms Enfield Smoothbore

[Harry]

I saw this gun listed by several venders and also on the Euroarms site. many references by the venders site the use of the gun in the early war period by North and South. The gun is not listed as approved on the smoothbore list. Has it been reviewed and rejected or is there some problem with the guns use or repro? I prefer the Enfield over the Springfield but don't want to waste my money if I can't get a SAC card and use it. Thanks for any ideas.

Harry
11'th NJ PVI

[threepdr]

Harry,

Euroarms makes the smoothbore version for sale in the UK and other non gun-friendly countries. A smoothbore version only requires a "shotgun License" which is much easier to obtain than a standard firearms license in the UK. I have several buddies that are American Civil War reenactors in the UK that have smoothbore Spingfields and Enfields, they are common there. Some were purchased from Euroarms that way, some had them bored out smooth by gunsmiths (spit!).

The vendors claim that early war Enfields of this model were manufactured smoothbore is marketing balderdash.

[Harry]

Thanks for the info Mark.

Guess I'll go with the Springfield.


Harry
11'th NJ PVI

[Southron Sr.]

Actually, the British government did manufacture and issue "Smoothbore Enfields" to Sepoy regiments in India following the Sepoy Rebellion in the late 1850's.

India at that time was administered by the British East India company and in effect, you had a large "multinational corporation" that administered an entire subcontinent as a corporate enterprise! Talk about "Big Business!"
It was after the rebellion had been put down that India became a "Crown Colony" of the British Empire.

Most of the Indian Army was made up of regiments of native troops that were led by British officers. For the Indian natives, enlisting in a Sepoy regiment was often a lifetime career and Sepoys usually made excellent soldiers.

By 1856 or 1857 the Sepoy regiments were turning in their old smoothbore muskets for the then new P-53 Enfields. Unfortunately the LUBE used in the issue Enfield cartridges was what sparked the rebellion.

A rumor went thru the ranks of the Sepoy regiments that the lube consisted of a mixture of lard (from hogs) and tallow (from cows) along with beeswax.

The standard loading drill for the P-53 Enfield required that the soldier tear open the paper cartridge with his teeth, and of course, he would often get some of the lube on either his teeth or lips.

As Hindu Sepoys considered a cow to be a "sacred animal" by getting some of the tallow on his lips, he was defiling his religion. As for the Moslem Sepoys, getting any lard on his teeth was considered "unclean" because Moslems consider hogs to be unclean animals.

A rumor swept thru the ranks of the Sepoy regiments that the new P-53 Enfields and their cartridges was a "plot" by British Christians to convert them into Christians and Sepoy regiments all over India began to muitny.

Usually these muitinys were followed by slaughtering their British officers and their families and within a short time, almost all of India was in rebellion. Thousands of British officers, British East India Company officials, their wives and childred were murdered.

The rebellion was finally put down by the British any many of the muitineers were tried and condemmed to death.

Following the rebellion, the British military decided that Sepoy regiments could not be trusted with rifled arms and so a "Smoothbore Enfield" the P-60 was "standardized" for issue to Sepoy regiments. This was a standard P-53 with a .577 smoothbore barrel and instead of an elevating rear sight, a simple "tombstone" rear sight was utilized.

Back in the 1960's I purchased about a dozen of those "Smoothbore Enfields" that came in from India. All were made in England and made by British contractors. According to the Indian national that I purchased those arms from, they were being used as late as World War II by the Indian army to teach new recruits to drill with arms!!!!

I sincerely doubt that any "Smoothbore Enfields" were ever imported by either the Union or the Confederacy during the war, as all of them were made specifically for the Sepoy regiments in the Indian army.

Interestingly enough, a factory to produce "Smoothbore Enfields" was set up in India and that factory was producing those smoothbore Enfields at least up until the 1960's as I recall seeing brand new smoothbore Enfields for sale at gun shows back at that time. The explanation I was given was that because India has strict gun control laws, Indian citizens are often restricted to owning only smoothbore muzzleloaders-so "Smoothbore Enfields" remained in production in India until at least the 1960's.