A HANDY BRITISH COMPROMISE

During days gone by, when the British Empire stretched across the globe and its officers and servants freely engaged in big-game hunting in many untamed and unknown parts of the world, a need was identified for a firearm that could do the job of both a rifle and a shotgun. The idea was that if an officer, stationed in some far-flung corner of Africa or elsewhere, encountered an antelope for the pot whilst out birdshooting, all that would be needed to successfully switch the gun from bird to buck was a change of ammunition.

Although various iterations of so-called “ball guns” were experimented with by the British, they all failed. The main reason was that their smooth bores (no rifling) rendered them very inaccurate with bullets of any sort. The first man who did crack the conundrum, however, was Lt Col George Vincent Fosbery VC. Fosbery, a retired Bengal Army officer who won the Victoria Cross for exceptional bravery in 1863, was a tireless experimenter where firearms were concerned and later, in 1895, also invented the Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver.

Fosbery’s patent No 7568