OPERATION – Manual, single action, manual indexing
TYPE OF FIRE – Manual repeating
RATE OF FIRE – 5 rpm
FEED DEVICE – 5-round cylinder
FEED DEVICE WEIGHT (EMPTY) – 1.81 g (28 grains) Black Powder, 11.02 g (170 grains) Ball – Per round *
FEED DEVICE WEIGHT (LOADED) – Five rounds – 9.05 g (140 grains) Powder, 55.1 g (850 grains) Ball *
MANUFACTURER – E.H. Collier, London, England
STATUS – Antique
SERVICE – Some limited British military service in Far East and India, commercial sales
This may be the most successful of the pre-Colt revolvers as several hundred of this pattern pistol were reported to have been manufactured and sold. The original concept and design of this revolver was patented by Captain Artemus Wheeler of Concord, Massachusetts on 1 June 1818. Wheeler’s weapon held seven rounds and the cylinder had to be rotated by hand for each shot. Elisha Haydon Collier designed a mechanically rotated variation of Wheeler’s design and patented his version in England, receiving Patent No. 4314 on 24 November 1818, only six months after Wheeler received his patent. Further, a Cornelius Coolidge, a Boston merchant, took Collier’s improvements on Wheeler’s design to France and obtained a five-year patent on the weapon on 5 August 1819.
The single-action turning of the cylinder on Collier’s design proved very difficult to maintain. The fist pattern weapon had a spring driven cylinder that was wound up as the weapon was loaded. Each time the hammer was cocked, the cylinder would rotate under spring tension the distance of a single chamber. Second pattern and later versions had to have the cylinder turned by hand for each shot. Both patterns had an additional action of the cylinder after rotation in that the cylinder would move forward for a countersunk depression on the chamber to meet with a conical chamfered extension on the breech of the barrel. The two pieces, the cylinder and the barrel, would be sealed together for the actual firing of the shot. When the hammer was again drawn back to cock the weapon, the cylinder was also drawn back off the breech of the barrel and allowed to rotate.
Each chamber of the revolver had its own touch hole, but there was only a single priming pan on the right side of the weapon. The very thick frizzen was hollow and held a quantity of priming powder inside of it. Every time the frizzen was pulled down and back into position for firing, a rotating mechanism at the base of the frizzen body would release a measured amount of powder into the priming pan. When the weapon was fired, the frizzen would be driven back and up as it was struck by the flint and the resulting sparks would ignite the charge in the priming pan.
Samuel Colt admitted that he had seen a Collier revolver while vising England as a young sailor. The design influenced his design of the upcoming Colt revolver, but at the very least, he greatly improved on Collier’s weapon.
The specimen described is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in New York City
