doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Gen Jacobs Sind Irregular Horse SxS

As a curiosity, this highly unusual "shotgun" has appeared on Guns International. It's billed as a muzzle loading SxS "shotgun" used by the Sind Irregular Horse.
https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...rse-regiment.cfm?gun_id=103373441#mob-20
Here we present a rare antique Swinburn & Son Double Barrel Percussion Saddle Ring Shotgun Marked for the Sinde Irregular Horse. This example has "SWINBURN & SON/1857" marked locks, and "SINDE IRREGULAR HORSE” marked on the top of the buttplate. The Sinde Irregular Horse regiment can trace its formation back to The Scinde Irregular Horse raised at Hyderabad, Sindh on August 8, 1839. The regiment was raised at the recommendation of Colonel Henry Pottinger, the Resident at Scinde. The first commandant was Captain W. Ward of the 15th Regiment of the Bombay Native Infantry. It was named after the province of Sind, where it was raised to protect the trade route from the Bolan Pass to Sukkur on the Indus River and fight against the marauding Baluchi warriors.

This example looks virtually the exact same as “The Jacob’s Rifles” Side by Side Percussion Double Rifle. C. P. Swinburn made both of these guns and was a gunmaker located at 16-17 Russell Street in Birmingham, England, beginning in the 1840s. The “Jacob’s Rifles” were manufactured by Swinburn & Son two years later in 1859. That double barrel percussion rifle was invented by British Indian Army Brigadier General John Jacob for extreme accuracy and range using a special exploding conical bullet. An order of 900 of these rifles from Swinburn & Son were only issued to a special unit of Indian soldiers he raised named "the Jacob's Rifles" (he died before the rifles arrived) for a brief period and then were sold on the private market as sporting arms.



My feeling (as the article also suggests) is this is almost certainly a Gen. Jacobs rifle with the rifling honed out of it. Here is the Reilly chapter which discusses this gun. For sub-continent historians this is an unusual find here in America.

. . . . .General Jacob’s Rifle: As discussed before In 1854 Col. John Jacob, famous throughout the Punjab and Sindh area after the 3rd Sikh war and still regarded as a saint in Jacobobad, Pakistan, designed a gun for use on the hot Sindhi plains and had it built in London by Daw (Swinburne was his preferred manufacturer) It was a rifled SxS muzzle loader, which allegedly could reach out 1,200 yards, and had a sword bayonet fitted to it. The rifle could use an exploding bullet.*30i Reilly had a license to produce it, its ammunition and its bayonet.*30j