Part3_d
4/11/07
8:38 pm
Page 188
The failure, if that is what it was, of ‘Nock, Jover and Green’ may have brought to an end Henry Nock’s involvement with the civilian market, at least for a while. Indeed, even during the firm’s short life he had secured a contract with the East India Company in 1776 for sixty rifles incorporating the breechloading system patented by Isaac de la Chaumette and improved by Captain Patrick Ferguson. On the evidence of the only recorded surviving example of this contract, the particularly high quality of its lock confirms Henry Nock’s continuing, and indeed life-long, interest in gunlocks. At this time, Board of Ordnance contracts are also recorded for the supply of bayonets in 1777 and locks in 1778 – the latter in the partnership with four Birmingham manufacturers. In the following year, an entry in the Minute Book of the Board of Ordnance on 28 July 1779 states that, ‘a new Invented Gun with seven barrels to fire at one time’ had been submitted by Captain James Wilson of the Marines. The gun was tried at Woolwich on 29 July in the presence of the Board who concluded that, ‘It appeared to answer the purposes proposed as a rifle Gun’. However, they considered that although it would not be ‘applicable to the Land Service . . . it may be useful on board Ships to fire from the Round Tops, of which the lords of the Admiralty were the best Judges’. Captain Wilson was notified of the Board’s decision and Henry Nock was contracted ‘to provide two of these seven-barrell’d rifle guns such as may be fit for the common uses in service’. Although Henry Nock had only supplied the Board of Ordnance with bayonets and locks by that date it may be that he had made the initial prototype submitted by Captain Wilson. In any event, in due course Henry Nock was issued with a warrant to make twenty seven-barrel guns. These were not to be rifled, although the prototype and the initial two guns manufactured by Henry Nock were rifled. It would appear that the Ordnance officers had been conducting further trials and had concluded that the gun would function much better if it was not rifled, a view which was accepted by the Admiralty. It is not clear why this decision was made but at that time no rifled gun had been accepted into service by the Board. Although Captain Wilson tried very hard to become involved with the early trials of his gun on board ship he did not meet with any success and in the end he had to be content with £400 for inventing the seven-barrel gun: this was paid on 23 May 1780. In the meantime, Henry Nock continued to manufacture the