.303. Manyofthesecontinueinserviceto
this day. With .303 British ammunition one
of the most common calibers to be found
from Cairo to the Cape, it was natural to arm
everything from game scouts and park rangers
to camp guards and farm workers with them.
The flip side of that coin is that untold
numbers of African animals have been
either poached, or wounded, by a Martini-
Even after the Martini-Henry rifle had been retired
as the British service weapon, various manufacturers
(including the royal arsenal at Enfield) continued to
build rifles on the actions in .303 British.Terry Wieland On Ammo
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Henry, whether chambered in
.577/.450 or .303 British, but
that is hardly the rifle’s fault.
A lesser known negative of the
old Martini is its horrid recoil.
Viewers of Zulu might contest
that statement, since every shot
fired in the movie appeared to
have no recoil at all, nor was
there much in the way of black-
powder smoke. Of course not- they were using blanks. The
real-life Martini was noted for
brutal recoil, mainly because of
the shape of the stock. For its
time, however, it was extremely
fast to operate — tests showed
trained infantrymen capable of
maintaining a rate of fire of 20
rounds per minute. The roughly
140 defenders of Rorke’s Drift
fired more than 20,000 rounds during the
battle. Considering there were 4,000 Zulu
attackers, the Martini’s rate of fire evened the
odds somewhat.
The rifle is also enormously strong. Tests
at the Providence Tool Company in Rhode
Island, at the time they were fulfilling a
contract to supply 600,000 Martini-Henrys
to the Ottoman Empire, proved the action to
be a beast. At one point, they put five (5)
480-grain bullets in the barrel ahead of a
double charge of gunpowder. The rifle took
it without a whimper.
It’s no wonder, then, that the Martini-
Henry is still relatively common to find in
use, 140 years after it was retired from the
British service as obsolete. A 480-grain, hard-
cast bullet, in the right place, will still stop
virtually anything, and there is little in the
way of plains game that can’t be taken with
the .303.
To the best of my knowledge, Kynamco
in England is the only company that now
manufactures .577/.450 Martini-Henry
ammunition. Finding some would be
the difficulty. If you want to shoot one,
handloading is about the only real option.
Fortunately, with a little work, brass can
be fashioned from .577 cases, which will
take Boxer primers; the Martini can handle
smokeless-powder pressures with no problem,
and cast bullets are common as dirt.
In fact, loading some ammunition and
trying to match the 20 rounds a minute
record of a Victorian infantrymen would be
an interesting challenge. Let me know how
you make out.