The American GARDNER Machine Gun:

In 1874 one American ex Union Captain William Gardner developed his hand cranked machine gun.

- Another hand-cranked - the rotary Gatling Gun had already been developed and used in The 1861-65 Civil War - And ten years after the Gardner .. a recoil operated machine gun - The Maxim - was invented by another American born munitions man Hiram Maxim ..

 Strange to relate both of these killing machines had to migrate to The British Empire to be adopted and play their part in Britain's slaughter of indigenous natives.

William Gardner Was With The British at 

The BATTLE OF ABU KLEA Sudan -17 January 1885.

Here's Youtube video that clearly shows the function of a two-barrel Gardner .. but it was also built in a single and a five barrel iteration. (NON-rotating barrels).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPnIIM4Il9U

Gardner got The PRATT & WHITNEY Company to work with his invention .. but despite their best efforts and successful demonstrations (Including 1880 trials at Sandy Hook) they failed to excite any interest from the US Army (they already had The Gatling Gun in various calibers).

 - but the British Royal Navy - who had also embraced The Gatling Gun (Yet another American invention dating from 1861) - bought the manufacturing rights and deployed all three Brand types (Gatling, Gardner, & Maxim) famously in The ZULU WARS.. (and variously also against the Matabele, The Beduoin, and The Mahdists. - The Brits weren't fussy about who or how they slaughtered - neither were the Imperial Russians who enjoyed the use of some 400 Gatlings against The Turkmen and others in Central Asia.

My homeland England has long claimed it's noble civilizing and democratic world influence (& boasted of it's "unarmed" Police) - but truth-be-known they were a bunch of greedy raggedy-arsed pirates who grasped at every new weapon they could find to invade and subjugate any folk who got in their way .. by using their remains to fertilize the fields and replaced their numbers where convenient with the UK's transplanted homeless miss-fits and convicts.

- In the second half of the sixteenth century Elizabeth I was so keen to make gunpowder from charcoal, saltpeter & brimstone that she formed The Royal Saltpetre Men to dig-out the excrement from latrines for their potassium nitrate makings.

- And did you know why 'BRIMSTONE' - Sulfur was so called? - it's because it was gathered from the brims of active volcanoes in hellish conditions 😈.

(I never thought of that)

The British company Vickers bought the Maxim Company outright in 1896 and further developed and lightened it as a belt-fed weapon - using The 'Vickers' until it was replaced by the (American again) Browning Model 1919 m/c gun.

The Lewis Light Machine gun was yet another American automatic arm (invented in 1911) that failed to be adopted there but found a warm welcome in Belgium & UK .. being made by BSA and then Savage Arms in USA. - Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis became very wealthy from his Royalty payments.

Historically it does rather sound like England gave a warm welcome to every war machine invented eh.

There can be "gold" in weapons and munitions - for their exploiters.

Marty K.
I knew this would happen  😊!

Hi Marty

 The Vickers was replaced by the FN MAG58.  The Brownings were in British service from the mid 1930’s with the RAF (Spits, Hurricanes, Lancasters, etc) and as tank MG’s during WW2 (as well as the BESA).  The MAG58 is a belt-fed variant of Browning’s 1918 BAR crossed with the feed system of the MG42, and incorporating the quick-change barrel of the FN Model D BAR.

Cheers, Rod

After researching & writing 1,036 blogs I've got something NEW to try .. I've signed-up to Patreon. - In over five years I've not made one cent from this .. NOW you can send me a wee support $ - starting from $1. to get all this stuff from New Zealand - over a year that's nearly the price of one Shooting magazine. - Am I worth it?

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=16618870