Enfield Rifle-musket

The service arm of Great Britain prior to the adoption of breech-loaders; manufactured at Enfield, England, at the royal small-arms factories. It was first extensively introduced in 1853, and was used during the Crime an war. It had three grooves, with a twist of about one turn in 6 feet. Before the adoption of the Martini-Henry, large numbers of those guns were utilized by converting them into breech-loaders on the Snider principle. The Enfield rifles, though very serviceable weapons, much better than the Belgian and Austrian arms imported to the United States during the civil war, were in almost every respect inferior to the old Springfield (U. S.) rifle-musket, nearly of the same caliber (.58), the Enfield being.577. All those weapons have now given place to various breech-loading arms.