I know a guy who uses a reproduction Colt. 44 caliber Walker six gun for plinking and wild hog hunting. The gun has performed reliably for him over a number of years. Sometimes we hear people say that “they don’t make ‘em (insert whatever) like they used to.” In the case of Walker Colts, they certainly don’t. They make “em better – a heck of a lot better.”
The original Walker Colt, named Samuel Hamilton Walker, who collaborated with Sam Colt to design the gun in 1846, was not manufactured by Colt, who, since closing his Paterson, N.J.,
We carry a very large inventory of Colt and Civil War firearms including muskets, carbines, rifles and accoutrements. Our inventory of historic antiques and firearms begin at the early collectors level and range all the way up to the advanced collector and investors level.
factory, had no manufacturing facility. Colt contracted with Eli Whitney Jr., to produce the guns at his Whitneyville, Conn., factory in 1847. Walker, who had become familiar with the earlier Colt Paterson during his tenure as a Texas Ranger, had been commissioned as a captain in the United States Mounted Rifle Regiment for the Mexican War, and persuaded the government to buy 1,000 of the new handguns for his regiment.
Problems developed with the Walker revolver in combat, but Captain Walker did not live to address them. He was killed in action on October 9, 1947, at Huamantia, Mexico. Some accounts have him speared with a lance; others maintain he was shot. At the end of the war, the remaining Walker models were returned to the army’s ordnance
by Joe Bilby
department save for a hundred made for civilian sale. I was not aware of all the specific complaints about the Walker until I received a copy of letter, from Mark Hubbs of Eras Gone Bullet Molds, which I am reprinting below in its entirety. It is an account by Captain Jonathan Williamson, the ordnance officer who received the revolvers at the end of the war.
“Ordnance Depot Vera Cruz, Mexico, May 8, 1848.
Col. G. Talcott Ordnance Corps.
Sir: Five Companies of discharged Texan rangers [Actually Mounted Rifles.] have turned in their arms and accoutrements. Agreeably to the statement of Colonel Hays, these men received less than a year ago 280 Colt’s patent pistols of which number 191 now revert to the U.States. The remainder chiefly bursted in their hands, tho a few were lost in skirmishing with the enemy.
Of the 191 turned in only 82 can be considered serviceable. All of the others have been more or less damaged by firing, and the wear and tear of some eight months use in the field. In some cases the cylinders are entirely destroyed – in others the barrels are irreparably injured where they join the cylinder – and again, having bursted at the muzzle, the barrels have been cut off to one half their original length.
As the pistols were turned in loaded, in attempting to discharge them the Snaps were found fully unequal to the explosions – and in no instance were all the six charges, in any one cylinder, exploded rarely ever four frequently but two.
Colonel Hays states that for the first few days after his men received these arms they were continually bursting – but that, eventually, those which were left were fired with less certainty of such a result.
This being probably the first experiment of these pistols in actual service, I consider it worthwhile to commit the foregoing to paper.
I am respectfully, Yr. Obt. St.
JNO. Williamson Capt. Ordnance”
The ultimate verdict was that the revolvers were made of inferior material and Colt, of course, got another chance, and this time manufactured his improved Dragoon model in his own factory, establishing his bona fides as a great handgun maker. There were no exploding Model 1860 Army revolvers at Brandy Station.
Mark Hubbs, by the way, is a busy guy in the black powder bullet business, with new bullet molds and cartridge designs all the time. He has recently ordered a limited run of .31 caliber Baby Dragoon conical bullet molds. Mark says that these two cavity molds cast “a perfect replication of the bullet cast from the original colt .31 caliber molds. The resulting slug is .330 inch in diameter and weighs in at about 77 grains. This is the bullet that Sam Colt intended for his .31 pocket pistols. The heavier bullet gives the little gun all the ballistic advantage that is possible.” All of Mark’s molds are double cavity and are $65 postpaid to anywhere in the USA. Check his website at: www erasgonebulletswebstartscomup date-36s-a/1842014076021856/.
While some are aware that there was Confederate use of captured Henry repeating rifles, particularly in the Shenandoah
Colt Walker revolver serial number 1017. (Metropolitan Museum of Art Arms and Armor collection, accession number 58.171.1.) Valley Campaign of 1864 and allegedly in the hands of Jefferson Davis’ personal bodyguard, few know that the first Henrys used in combat were likely used by Confederates, and as early as the summer of 1862 in Kentucky. In the summer of 1862, Louisville Journal editor George Denison Prentice received a gift of a Henry rifle from Secretary of War Henry Stanton. The editor waxed eloquent on the rifle in June 1862, calling it “the most beautiful and efficient rifle we have ever seen.” Local firearms dealers were soon carrying the Henry in their inventories and local citizens and militiamen were purchasing them over the counter. Prentice himself became a wholesale dealer.
During the Confederate invasion of Kentucky later that summer, a number of Henrys went unaccounted for, and one Union commander who surrendered to a Rebel force, recalled that one Confederate company was “armed with volcanic rifles [predecessor of the Henry] (16 shooters).” These were undoubtedly Henrys. Several early numbered Henrys have appeared over the years since the war with Confederate association as well. Ordnance history can be complicated.