Remington Model 1861 Navy

About the Remington Model 1861 Navy

The Remington Model 1861 Navy, often grouped with the Remington 'Old Model' revolvers, is a .36 caliber percussion (cap-and-ball) single-action revolver made by E. Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York. It is the .36-caliber counterpart to the larger .44 Model 1861 Army, sharing that gun's solid-frame, top-strap design derived from the earlier Beals patents and improved by William Elliott's December 1861 patent covering the grooved loading lever. The six-shot cylinder is loaded from the front with a ball or conical bullet seated over a loose black-powder charge, ignited by a percussion cap fitted to a nipple at the rear of each chamber, and the hammer is thumb-cocked manually for every shot. Its roughly 7 3/8-inch octagonal barrel and integral loading lever ride on an enclosed top-strap frame that gave it greater rigidity and easier sight alignment than the open-top Colt Navy revolvers it competed against. Produced only briefly during the American Civil War, the Model 1861 Navy was quickly superseded by the redesigned New Model Navy of 1863, which corrected the earlier model's loading-lever and safety shortcomings.

The Model 1861's grooved loading lever was a clever double-duty part - a slot let the cylinder pin be drawn forward to drop the cylinder out without lowering the lever - but under recoil that same pin could creep forward and jam the cylinder solid. The flaw, shared with its .44 Army sibling, drove Remington's 1863 redesign into the New Model line that Civil War collectors later misnamed the 'Remington 1858'.

Remington Model 1861 Navy specifications

Reference weight for the Model 1861 Navy could not be confirmed to a single reliable figure and is left null; the encyclopedic source consulted reports a family weight of about 2 lb 13 oz (~1.27 kg) that appears to reflect the heavier .44 Army rather than the .36 Navy. Barrel length is the standard 7 3/8-inch octagon (~187 mm) and overall length about 13.25 in (~337 mm). Muzzle energy is computed from a typical .36 cap-and-ball ball weight and velocity and should be treated as an estimate. Original barrel rifling specifics (twist rate and groove count) could not be confirmed and are left null. The '1861' in the name refers to the Elliott improvement patent date; volume production ran mainly in 1862 before the 1863 New Model Navy superseded it.