The Bitterlich Derringer

Details found on unmarked derringers, or pistols bearing a name which is plainly that of a sales agent or owner, may help tie down a Southern origin for the gun. A nut instead of a hammer cap screw is one characteristic of pistols made by Frank J. Bitterlich, 16 Deaderich Street, Nashville, Tennessee. Bitterlich pistols are characteristic in having octagonal barrels, though there are of course exceptions. Southern-made pistols seem to have the cheaper, easily taken down detail, which Deringer himself used sparingly, of fastening the rear of the lockplate by the edge or flange of the wood screw which merely holds a notched end of the plate. Many true derringer pistols, especially the better quality ones, have the lockplate rear tip drilled cleanly through for a screw that more solidly holds the plate, but also must be removed completely to disassemble.
Bitterlich pistols have one clue which, marked or unmarked, would seem to correctly identify an arm as being made by this celebrated pistol smith. This is the detail form of the bottom edge of the lockplate (back action of course), and the rounded shape of the plate which is blended into the cross-section curve of the wood handle. The bottom edge of the plate is a broken curve with a sort of comer to it, approximately in line vertically with the front edge of the hammer. While Philadelphia derringers are usually scroll engraved on lock, hammer, and trim, Southern-made pistols are more often completely plain. Of the few Bitterlich pocket persuaders so far identified, some have edge engraving, a line of triangular-shaped chiseled indents, as a decorative border to the lockplates, and along the flat-shanked hammers. Bitterlich also seems to have pioneered in flat-butt derringers,
and made a few which have metal sheath triggers like the “Root patent” Colts and common stub-trigger cartridge guns of the succeeding decades.

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CHAPTER 17 The Starr Rises

From the catalog of Wallis and Wallis, British gun auctioneers ( 1962 ) at Lewes in Sussex, we read of the sale of a Starr revolver: Lot 1060 ... A 6 shot .44 Starr SA Army Perc Rev 14", brl 8", No. 51594, the top strap bearing old engraving Col. Colt Address New York, Good Condition but action As Found & frame screw not orig . Eben T. Starr of Yonkers, New York, might not have smiled at this latter day whimsey. Marking his re volver with the name of the man he dared challenge by launching a new revolving pistol business in 1858 was to him not funny. Though the modern gun bug who fraudulently marked this in the hope someone would bite on it as a hitherto unknown Colt double action revolver we trust was unsuccessful in his piracy, per haps the buyer at the Wallis and Wallis auction cherishes his purchase for what it is: one of the best and most modem revolvers of the Civil War era. Though complex inside at first glance, its parts are well thought out and reveal Star...

CHAPTER 6 Rifle Muskets: Civil War Scandals

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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...

Civil War Guns

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