Civil War Auction
Lot 32:
Civil War Era and VERY Unusual! Whitneyville Plymouth Navy .69 Musket in fair condition with wear and pitting. Comes with the correct bayonet.
This is a still a pretty good example of a rifle that usually shows up in lesser condition from ship-board use and navy storage. It is complete and all original, with the correct ramrod and unique rear sight. The Whitney Model 1861 Navy Rifle was the brainchild of John A. Dahlgren, who began testing the idea of a .69 caliber rifle for the U.S. Navy on the 1858 voyage of the USS Plymouth, hence one of the several names applied to this rifle. Dahlgren wanted a large-caliber short rifle for shipboard use and used the French carabine-a-tige as a model. He wanted a heavy barrel to compensate for its recoil and originally had the idea of fitting it with a Bowie-knife style bayonet that would be useful has a hand-held weapon and for other shipboard tasks. C&R Eligible S/N:nsn
As produced by Whitney for the Navy on a July 1861 contract, the rifle was lighter than Dahlgren envisioned and utilized a saber bayonet supplied by Collins, but mounted a 34-inch .69 caliber rifled barrel secured by two bands, with a long French style rear sight graduated to 1,000 yards. Whitney’s contract called for 10,000 rifles with deliveries to start in February 1862, but difficulties in obtaining barrels delayed production and delivery for a year. Five sample rifles were delivered in October 1862 and regular deliveries started in February 1863, with 5,300 delivered that year and the remaining 4,695 in 1864.
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