Pretty much ever since the earliest firearms were invented, gunsmiths were trying to find ways to let them fire more than one shot before reloading.
The obvious solution was to add a second barrel — a solution still used today in shotguns and rifles — but a number of other innovative (and sometimes unsafe) options were tried over the centuries, including superimposed loads.
Revolver designs began appearing in the 15th century, but were expensive, complicated and generally hand-operated.
However, following Colt’s invention of the modern revolver in 1836, several rifle-makers almost immediately thought, “Hang on, what if we take this new revolver mechanism and give it a buttstock and long barrel? Wouldn’t that create the long-awaited repeating rifle?”
In theory, it did, but in practice, revolving rifles proved to be complicated with safety issues, and it took until the 1850s for the technology to advance to the point where revolving rifles were commercially viable.
The Colt New Model Revolving Carbine was by far and away the best known and most successful of these designs, but not the only one; Remington made a range of revolving rifles based on its 1858 New Model Army and Navy revolvers.
Across the Atlantic, British gunmakers — notably William Tranter and Robert Adams — were developing their own innovations in revolver technology, particularly relating to double-action mechanisms.
While the Adams revolvers used more or less what we’d recognise as a modern double-action mechanism, the Tranter designs often used a strange double-trigger set-up in which the lower trigger was pulled (and held) back to cock the gun, then the upper trigger pulled to fire it.
This was known in contemporary parlance as a “hesitating action” and the design was most famously used in Tranter’s handguns from the early- to mid-1850s, but around 1856 was also incorporated into a revolving rifle design.
It wasn’t the first double action revolver-rifle, though. The Adams 1851 revolver-rifle (based on the double-action only pistol) had been introduced a few years previously.
The Tranter rifles were made in three calibres — 80 bore (.38 calibre), 54 bore (about .44 calibre) and .38 bore (.50 calibre) — and featured a five-shot cylinder and barrel lengths in the 22–25 inch range, along with a sling swivel.
While I could not find any contemporary reports of the rifle’s range, a December 1861 article in The Empire newspaper in Sydney attributed a range of 250 yards to a Tranter 54-bore revolver handgun fitted with an aftermarket stock by local retailer and gunsmith Henry Challener.
Challener did sell the actual Tranter revolving rifles themselves, however an ad in the 24 January 1860 edition of The Empire reads: “Rifles — Tranter’s Revolvers, with extra cylinders, Come At Last. Challener, Gun-maker, King St”;and a 24 October 1860 ad in The Sydney Morning Herald announced a shipment of Tranter’s revolver-rifles had just arrived at Challener’s aboard the ship Wave of Life.
I could find no reference to the Tranter rifles being imported or sold after that date, although ads from Challener as late as July 1861 referred to him having “Deane & Adams revolving rifles” — a similar design, albeit with a single-trigger double-action mechanism — while a 28 December 1867 ad from F Lassetter & Co in Sydney made reference to having “revolving rifles” available, without specifying a make or model.
The earliest mention of the rifles in Australia I could find was from the 5 March 1858 edition of The Argus in Melbourne, where the gun-maker W Richards was advertising “Tranter’s double trigger revolving rifles” for sale.
None of the contemporary ads I could find made mention of a price. The closest I was able to come was an auction notice in the Brisbane Telegraph on 8 March 1879, which included a “double action six-chambered Tranter’s Rifle” available with a reserve price of £5/5- (about $745 today).
One of the major concerns with revolver rifles was that placing one’s off-hand in front of the cylinder when firing was not optimal. At best, it was liable to get hit by powder blast and lead shavings, and at worse (in the event of a chain-fire) the user could find themselves minus several fingers or even their entire hand.
The Tranter revolving rifle solved this problem by having an unusual trigger guard that was also intended to function as a form of grip, meaning the firer’s off-hand was clear of the cylinder during cocking and firing.
While theoretically requiring the user to adopt a quasi-Scheutzen stance for shooting, it is also quite likely many shooters simply wrapped leather or cloth around the barrel and gripped it directly, much like with a regular rifle.
While most of the known Tranter revolving rifles use the double trigger “hesitating action” system, some were apparently made with a more conventional single-trigger, double-action mechanism, although I have never seen pictures of one.
Some versions had a shroud over the hammer, not unlike that seen on some modern-day double-action only pocket revolvers.
Despite not being made in huge numbers — it seemed pretty clear even then that cartridge-firing, magazine-fed rifles were the future — a number of Tranter revolving rifles made their way to the colonies, notably Australia, where they were used in the 1860s by police forces, settlers and bushrangers.
Tranter firearms were widely regarded as being of excellent quality, and Tranter revolving rifles were no exception. The Ben Hall gang had some, as did the NSW police pursuing them.
The most famous of all the Tranter revolving rifles is undoubtedly the one used by Bushranger John Gilbert, who was part of the infamous Ben Hall Gang and said to have committed more than 600 crimes including bank robberies and stage-coach hold-ups.
Gilbert stole the rifle from settler William Davis on 4 March 1865 and was very impressed with the additional range it offered over a revolver.
Ironically, Davis had purchased the rifle from Challener’s shop because of his concern over the Hall Gang’s activities in the area.
Gilbert was armed with the rifle when the police caught up with him on 13 May 1865, and engaged in a shootout. Gilbert’s Tranter rifle misfired (reportedly because its chambers had gotten wet) and he was killed by police.
The rifle was recovered from Gilbert’s body, the stock having broken when the dead bushranger fell on it, and it was returned to Davis, who had it repaired.
It passed through several hands over the years until the early 2000s, when it was acquired by a well-known Tasmanian collector, who owned it until putting it up for auction with Australian Fine Arms & Collectibles in October 2024, where it sold for a staggering $62,000.
A small number of Tranter revolving rifles appear to have remained in some remote police station gun cabinets until well into the cartridge firing era.
A “Tranter patent rifle” is recorded as being on issue to Sub-Inspector James Keegan, stationed at Braidwood in the NSW Tablelands, in March 1879. This may be the same rifle previously provided to a group of volunteers despatched to the area in March 1867 as part of efforts to capture the Thomas Clarke gang of bushrangers.
The manager of Cockatoo Creek Station in Queensland, WB Slade is known to have owned and used a Tranter revolving rifle in the late 1860s and early 1870s; the rifle was known as “Five Times” by the Kanaka workers at the station due to the fact it could be fired five times before reloading.
References to the Tranter revolving rifles drop off after 1868, with most later references to “Tranter’s rifles” referring to single-shot rook rifles, which were popular until around WWI.
Despite being rendered completely obsolete by magazine-fed repeating rifles, the revolving rifle concept hasn’t completely gone away. There’s still a few modern iterations kicking around to keep things interesting.
Alfa-Proj make a range of revolving carbines in various calibres including .22 LR and .357 Magnum, and there is even a revolving 12ga shotgun, the Russian MTs255, but it is not currently available outside Russia.
Although only produced for a short time, and obsolete almost as soon as they were made, the Tranter revolving rifles still made their mark on Australia’s history and continue to interest historians and collectors more than 160 years later.
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