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Intro

The last time I focused on the old type cartridge was about 8 months ago. So this week let’s take a little break, we don’t talk about firearms this time but let’s talk about a kind of cartridge.

Origin and Designer

The main character of this video/article is a kind of paper cartridge named Pritchett cartridge. I believe you still remember my old video/article where we mentioned a British rifle-musket, Pattern 1853 Enfield. Besides it was a rifle-musket, it was a Minié rifle. So the Pritchett cartridge also was known as the Enfield cartridge.

Then, why could this Enfield cartridge be named Pritchett? Now we have to mention a man, Robert Taylor Pritchett. He was born in London. Although he invented the Pritchett bullet with another weapon design master Metford in 1853, he was an artist and illustrator. As an artist he painted royal ceremonies for Queen Victoria, and he illustrated Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. Because of the new invention, Pritchett not only won fame, but also got 1000 pounds from the government on its adoption by the small-arms committee as his award.

Pritchett Bullet

Actually the original Pritchett bullet was not perfect. Because during the Indian Mutiny the troops found the original 0.568 too hard to load, Col. Boxer decided to modify it and reduced the diameter to 0.55. In order to make the effect better, he continued improving. He changed the mixed beeswax-tallow lubrication to pure beeswax. So if now we see a person make a Pritchett cartridge and use tallow as the lubricant, he probably wants to replicate the original version of the Pritchett cartridge.

The second improvement was that he made a bullet plug. The original Pritchett design relied only on the explosion of the charge so it resulted in too slow an expansion. This slow expansion can make unburnt powder to escape around the bullet and then it causes excessive fouling. Therefore, Boxer added a clay plug to the base to facilitate expansion. So this is another one point to distinguish the original design and the later improved design.

Finally the Pritchett cartridge traveled to many battlefields with pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-muskets, from Crimean war in Europe to American Civil War in the new continent, and even saw the New Zealand Wars and the senses after the collapse of the Federal Republic of Central America.

Additionally the Pritchett bullet had a variant version. It was called the modern Pritchett Bullet. The "Modern Pritchett Bullet Mould" is basically a slightly shortened version of the original Pritchett projectile in order to stabilize better in slow twist muskets but at the same time it can also be used in the fast twist muskets. Then, its name had a word “modern” but it still was a bullet in the 19th century in the late part of the 1850s, but not a modern replica in the 21st century.

Why Was It a Perfect Cylinder?

The Pritchett Bullet was a Minié type bullet so it’s a cylinder that the Hemisphere mounted on the top but why does its paper cartridge haven’t a hemisphere and it’s a perfect cylinder? The answer is actually very simple. The head of the bullet is plugged into the paper cartridge and its butt faces the outside. In order to make this structure come true we need 2 layers of structure to make this cartridge. Briefly, the first paper is used to make the first layer part and it is the gunpowder storage. The second paper can pack the bullet and the first part both. So we got this cylinder shaped paper cartridge, even though it used the Minié type bullet.

The feature of loading

Compared with the older ball paper cartridge, loading the Pritchett cartridge has more steps. Ripping the cartridge and pouring the gunpowder in the barrel are the same 【*The only difference is to rip it with the hand but not mouth and teeth】 but loading the bullet is a little bit different. After pouring gunpowder, we can put the cartridge in the muzzle but when the head of the bullet just passes the muzzle line, we must stop for a few seconds and quickly tear the rest of the cartridge off. Then using the ramrod to finish this loading. So the last action of taking the rest paper off might be a feature of loading the Pritchett cartridge or the feature of all of the Minié ball type paper cartridges.