Historic Le Mat Revolver

[sisu]

I'm reading Cold Mountain and came across the Le mat revolver carried by Inman. I did a google on the thing and got this from Wikipedia. It appears to have been the close up weapon to fear.

The mid-1800s were a time in American history that gave birth to a number of innovative firearm designs, and this truly unique, unusual sidearm was also known as the "Grape Shot Revolver." Developed in New Orleans in 1856 by Dr. Jean LeMat and backed by Pierre G.T. Beauregard, who was to become a general with the Confederacy. Roughly 2,900 were produced.

The distinguishing characteristic of LeMat's revolver is that its 9-shot cylinder revolves around a separate central barrel of larger caliber than the chambers in the cylinder proper. The central barrel is smoothbore and can function as a short-barrelled shotgun, with the firing selecting whether to fire from the cylinder or the smoothbore barrel by flipping a lever on the end of the hammer. Flipping the lever down caused the moveable striker to fall upon the primer set directly under the hammer, discharging the lower barrel, while leaving it in the standard position would fire the chambers in the cylinder, much like any other revolver. The LeMat is sometimes referred to as a "Grapeshot Revolver".

LeMat originally chambered his pistol for .40 (or .42) caliber revolver bullets, with a .60 (16 gauge) smoothbore barrel, and had a jointed ramrod (mounted on the right-hand side of the frame), which was used to load both barrels. Later, during the American Civil War, a lighter .35-caliber pistol with a .50 caliber (28-gauge) smoothbore barrel was produced, but as these were non-standard ammunition sizes (.36 or .44 caliber were most common for contemporary revolvers), LeMat owners had to cast their own bullets (as opposed to being issued them from general military stores). The final models of the LeMat were produced in .36 or .44 caliber in response to these criticisms, but too few of them managed to get past the Union blockade of the South during the Civil War to be of any real use.


There is further information about it's use during the Civil War on Wikipedia.

Here a several links for those of you that want to read further. BTW Cabelas sells a working replica of this weapon.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~stargate/lemat.htm

http://www.johnnyringo.net/lemat.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeMat_Revolver

[actionshooter]

I've studied up on them a bit, very interesting history from its use by the South in the civil war.