Sealed patterns, marked with a red wax seal and kept in the Tower, survive from the 18th century onwards. Infantry swords were largely discarded but patterns were provided for troopers’ cavalry swords and weapons for specialist bodies. Officers still carried privately purchased weapons that conformed to Ordnance patterns. Until about 1710, during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), the Board of Ordnance had usually bought complete weapons from private contractors. Then it began to place separate contracts for the different stages of manufacture and assembly, so that it had greater control. Most gun barrels and locks were made in and around Birmingham.
London gun-makers, mostly in the Minories near the Tower, added the stocks and completed the weapons. The Tower was the central depot. The Ordnance provided the contractors with detailed specifications, including specimens or patterns, and inspected and proved (tested) their work at the Tower, where it was then stamped or engraved with the Ordnance mark. During the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815) such was the demand for weapons for Britain and her allies that an organisation similar to the Tower’s was set up in Birmingham, for the complete manufacture and proving of weapons. In London the Ordnance itself took on the production and assembly of components, with a factory on Tower Wharf as well as at Lewisham.
After the war all these operations closed down, but the Ordnance then set up a new factory at Enfield Lock.The Board constantly considered ideas for new or improved military weapons. But, perhaps surprisingly, it was the sportsman, rather than the soldier or inventor, who largely inspired the innovations which were to transform military firearms by the mid 19th century. These included the percussion cap, a cylindrical copper cap containing explosive fulminate that was detonated by a hammer. The Rev. Alexander Forsyth experimented with fulminate in the Tower in 1806, but the man usually credited with the invention of the percussion cap is an English artist, Joshua Shaw. In 1839 the Board finally decided to convert weapons in store to Pattern 1839 percussion muskets for Regiments of the Line, but in 1841 a fire at the Tower destroyed vast quantities of flintlocks, which speeded up the introduction of the new percussion firearms.
Other innovations included rifling the barrel (cutting a spiral groove inside to make a bullet spin for truer aim) and breech-loading. The Ordnance, however, was wary of change; a soldier in the heat of battle needed a firearm that was robust and reliable. It was not until 1867 that the breech-loading rifle, in the form of the Snider, became standard issue, twelve years after the functions of the Board of Ordnance were taken over by the War Department.
Tags: british weapons, cavalry swords, copper cap, enfield lock, gun makers, military firearms, military weapons, percussion cap, war of the spanish succession, wax seal