Colt Walker


The Colt Walker, sometimes known as the Walker Colt, is a single-action revolver with a revolving cylinder holding six charges of black powder behind six bullets. It was designed in 1846 as a collaboration between Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker and American firearms inventor Samuel Colt.

History

The 1847 Colt Walker was the largest black powder repeating handgun ever made at that time, but contrary to popular belief in the United States, it was not the most powerful, as some Austrian and British revolvers of the 1850s based on the Adams Beaumont design were even more powerful because of their large calibers. The Colt Walker was created in the mid-1840s in a collaboration between Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker and American firearms inventor Samuel Colt, building upon the earlier Colt Paterson design. Walker wanted a handgun that was extremely powerful at close range.
Samuel Walker carried two of his namesake revolvers in the Mexican–American War. He was killed in battle the same year his famous handgun was invented, 1847, shortly after he had received them. Only 1,100 of these guns were originally made, 1,000 as part of a military contract and an additional 100 for the civilian market, making original Colt Walker revolvers extremely rare and expensive to acquire. On October 9, 2008, one specimen that had been handed down from a Mexican War veteran was sold at auction for US$920,000. As reported in America's 1st Freedom magazine July 2018, a Model 1847 Colt Walker pistol - the only known surviving example complete with its original case, sold by Rock Island Auction for a record price of $1.84 million. This makes this the most expensive single firearm ever sold at auction.
The Republic of Texas had been the major purchaser of the early Paterson Holster Pistol, a five shot cal.36 revolver, and Samuel Walker became familiar with it during his service as a Texas Ranger. In 1847, Walker was engaged in the Mexican–American War as a captain in the United States Mounted Rifles. He approached Colt, requesting a large revolver to replace the single-shot Model 1842 Percussion Pistols then in use. The desired.44-.45 caliber revolver would be carried in saddle mounted holsters and would be large enough to dispatch horses as well as enemy soldiers. The Colt Walker was used in the Mexican–American War and on the Texas frontier.
Medical officer John "Rip" Ford took a special interest in the Walkers when they arrived at Veracruz. He obtained two examples for himself and is the primary source for information about their performance during the war and afterward. His observation that the revolver would carry as far and strike with the same or greater force than the.54 caliber Mississippi Rifle seems to have been based on a single observation of a Mexican soldier hit at a distance of well over one hundred yards. The Walker, unlike most succeeding martial pistols and revolvers, was a practical weapon out to about 100 yards.

Specifications

The Colt Walker holds a powder charge of in each chamber, more than twice what a typical black powder revolver holds. It weighs unloaded, has a barrel, and fires a.44 caliber conical and round ball. The initial contract called for 1,000 of the revolvers and accoutrements. Colt commissioned Eli Whitney Junior to fill the contract and produced an extra 100 revolvers for private sales and promotional gifts. Notable recipients include John Coffee Hays.
Colt commissioned New York engraver Waterman Ormsby to etch a scene on the cylinder that was based on Walker's description of the 1844 battle.

Problems

In addition to its large size and weight, problems with the Walker included ruptured cylinders after firing. This has been attributed to primitive metallurgy, soldiers allowing powder to spill across the mouths of the chambers, and even loading the original conical bullets backwards into the chambers. Under 300 of the original 1,000 were returned for repair due to a ruptured cylinder. Lard was loaded into the mouths of the cylinders on top of each bullet after loading to prevent the spark from igniting all chambers at once, a practice which continues to this day among black-powder revolver shooters, and although each chamber held 60 grains of powder, Colt recommended no more than 50 grains in each.
The Walker had an inadequate loading lever catch that often allowed the loading lever to drop during recoil, preventing fast follow-up shots. Period-correct fixes for this often included placing a rawhide loop around both the barrel and loading lever, to prevent the loading lever from dropping under recoil and locking the action.

Legacy

The Whitneyville-Hartford Dragoon is known as the first transitional model from the Walker to the Dragoon series, as it was largely built from leftover Walker parts. Subsequent contracts beginning in 1848 followed, for what is today known among collectors as the First, Second and Third Dragoon Models that were all based on the Colt Walker, enabling a rapid evolution of the basic revolver design. These improvements included shorter barrels, shorter chambers, typically loaded only to 50 grains instead of 60 grains, thereby reducing the occurrence of ruptured cylinders, and the addition of an improved catch at the end of the loading lever to prevent the dropping of the loading lever under recoil.
The Colt Walker was quite powerful, with modern replicas firing modern FFFg black powder producing energy levels in excess of muzzle-energy with both picket bullets and, round ball bullets. The black powder Colt Walker is mistakingly regarded as the most powerful commercially manufactured repeating handgun from 1847 until the introduction of the.357 Magnum in 1935, having a muzzle energy nearly exactly the same as a handgun firing a.357 Magnum. The Colt Walker has long maintained a unique position and mystique among handgun users, and its name is often used as a common expression of any overly large generic handgun example.
Modern replicas chambered in the.45 Black Powder Magnum wildcat cartridge have been offered by the Colt Blackpowder shop, Cimarron Firearms, Armi San Marco, and Uberti Firearms.

In popular culture

In the 1968 book True Grit, 14-year-old Mattie carries a Colt Dragoon. However, possibly due to the Walker's bigger size, a cartridge-converted Colt Walker was used as Mattie's weapon in the 1969 film based on the book, though Wayne's character referred to it as a Colt Dragoon nonetheless. In the 2010 remake of the film by the Coen Brothers, she carries a Dragoon, as originally described in the book
In the American television series, Preacher as well as the comic book of the same name, the character Saint of Killers uses a pair of Walker Colts. Gifted to him by the Angel of Death, the pistols can kill anything, never miss and never run out of ammunition.
In the 1992 American revisionist Western film, Unforgiven, the character, "Little Bill" Dagget, portrayed by Gene Hackman, clarifies the events of a shootout in a saloon, describing how the Colt Walker handgun exploded in the hand of one of the gun fighters, leading to his death.
In the Western movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales, the title character, played by Clint Eastwood, carried and used two Colt Walker revolvers, among other weapons of the Civil War era.