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LOT 1102
Extremely Important, Only Known, Documented U.S. Navy Trials Artemus Wheeler Flintlock Revolving Rifle in Private Hands - NSN, 50 cal., 32 5/8 inch round bbl., bright finish, walnut stock. This incredibly rare revolving rifle is one of four Captain Artemus Wheeler revolving long guns (two long single barreled guns and two pepperbox style carbines) manufactured and purchased by the U.S. Navy for trials in 1821. Wheeler offered the guns to the Navy at the cost of $100 each, a hefty price for the period. Only this rifle remains outside a museum. The other three reside in the Smithsonian and Virginia Military Institute museum collections. The Smithsonian’s single barrel example is noted as smoothbore musket. As such, this rifle is the only example of a very desirable and historically significant revolving firearm still available
for advanced private collections, arguably one of the most desirable and historic given the Wheeler patent firearms’
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influence on the subsequent development of American revolving arms, including those of Samuel Colt. It is pictured on the cover of the April 1978 issue of “The Gun Report” and discussed in the article “Captain Artemus Wheeler, Gunsmith Concord, Massachusetts, 1781-1845” by Willard C. Cousins and pictured on page 18. On page 21, he notes that the rifle was formerly in the Colonel B.R. Lewis Collection and was described in his article “Captain Wheeler’s Revolving Guns” in the April 1953 issue of “The American Rifleman.” There was also a second part of Cousins’s article in the May issue, a third part in the June issue, and a conclusion in the July issue. These guns are also discussed in “Collier and His Revolvers” by Clay P. Bedford in the American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin 24 which shows the Smithsonian examples.
These firearms are based on designs by Captain Artemus Wheeler of Concord, Massachusetts. They were subsequently improved and patented in Europe. Wheeler first patented the design in the U.S. on June 10, 1818. Elisha Haydon Collier, a resident of Boston, Massachusetts, received a patent on an improvement of the design on November 24, 1818, in England, and Cornelius Coolidge, also of Boston, patented an improved design in France on August 5, 1819. Collier’s name soon became the one associated with the design, but the Collier revolving system is rightly considered by the Royal Armouries and serious collectors and arms historians today to truly be the invention of Captain Wheeler.
AS PICTURED AND DESCRIBED IN "THE GUN REPORT" FROM APRIL 1978