Mars Equipment Company

During these affairs, I was called in as a consultant to Shore Galleries, an auction firm specializing in firearms sales, and remained with this activity when the auctioneer, Sig Shore, formed a company to deal in surplus military rifles and ammunition, and secondhand guns generally. While the original concept of MARS Equipment Corporation was to engage in buying from primary importers and resell as jobbers and dealers in the United States, the market conditions dictated an expansion of the company funds into other channels. The course of manufacturing presented itself and a series of coincidences launched the now-popular Centennial Arms Corporation line of percussion shooting replica revolvers, pistols, and pistol-carbines. The success of Forgett in Navy Arms, with which Shore had dealt in the auction business, led him to decide to manufacture the Model 1860 or Colt’s New Model Revolving Holster Pistol—the Colt New Model Army .44.
My work on this was at first less, ultimately considerably more effort than with launching the Navy Arms project. Shore and myself on a trip to Germany passed through Liege, Belgium. There we made the acquaintance of Mr. Paul Hanquet, great grandson of one J. Hanquet who in 1852 had signed an agreement with Sam Colt authorizing him to manufacture Colt’s Patent (Colt Brevete) revolvers in Liege. Associated with Mr. Paul was his cousin, Mr. Albert Hanquet, in a company the trade mark of which is “Centaure.” The rampant centaur is quite clearly lifted from the cylinder engraving of one of Colt’s Paterson pistols, and “Centaure” had been handgun and musket makers in Liege for generations. Shore bought a number of muskets from these people and later, upon returning to the United States and casting about for additional work for MARS money, hit upon the idea of having them make the copy of the Colt 1860. Other people were interested in this venture and to distinguish the military and modem firearms sales business of MARS from the new venture, a new firm was organized, appropriately titled by me, Centennial Arms Corporation.

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CHAPTER 6 Rifle Muskets: Civil War Scandals

You place me in a most embarrassing position, Mr. Secretary. How is that, Mr. Wilkeson? the gaunt-faced Penn sylvanian queried, the lines of his expression amplified by the fatigue and, somewhat, disappointment with which he laid down his role as Secretary of War for Mr. Lincoln. Because, Mr. Cameron, the newspaperman re sponded, your contract for rifle muskets with the Eagle Manufacturing Company of Mansfield, Connecticut is for only 25,000 arms, and my friends there, whom I induced to engage in this business in expectation of your issuing a further order, as your assistant Mr. Scott assured me you would, will be sorely embarrassed in their operations on this small amount. Indeed this is bad news to me, Mr. Wilkeson, War Secretary Simon Cameron sympathetically observed, as he stuffed papers from his desk drawer into a large portfolio, scanning them briefly, consigning some to the waste basket. But as you can see, I am leaving office today; I believe Mister Stanton, who repla

The Gatling Gun

Ager, Williams, Vandenberg, these have faded into history. The repeating gun most remembered from the war, and yet one which had a very confusing record of use therein, is that of Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling. I had the pleasure of witnessing how effectively Dr. Gatling had builded when I attended a meeting of the American Ordnance Association at Aberdeen the fall of 1957 . Mounted on a testing stand was a small bundle of barrels, dwarfed in seeming firepower by the huge cannon flanking it. But when the gunner pushed the button and that mighty mite whirred into action with a high-pitched snarling roar so rapidly that no individual explosions could even be sensed, I knew I had witnessed not only the world’s fastest-firing machine gun, and the world’s heaviest gun in weight of metal fired (a ton and a half in one minute), but a gun that was directly inspired by the Civil War special artillery General Butler bought from Dr. Gatling. First of Gatling’s guns was bulky wheeled carriage “c

CHAPTER 7 Injustice to Justice

In justice to Justice, it must be said that a recent examination of one of the muskets, for the supplying of which to the Union he was so villified, proves to be a reasonably well-assembled hodgepodge of surplus parts and at least as strong and reliable as the American parts from which it was built. But when Philip S. Justice, gunmaker-importer of Philadelphia, tried to get aboard the Federal musket contract gravy train, he both got more than he bar gained for—and Holt and Owen conversely gave him less.

Civil War Guns

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