The Evolution of Socket Bayonet Manufacture : From Hand-Craft to Mechanisation 1770 -1860

In the case of military muskets and rifles the bayonet was, and still is, an integral part of the ‘weapon system’. There are many excellent books covering the history of the bayonet in its myriad varieties adopted and used by the armed forces of the world. These books provide a wealth of detail on national variations and often include many rare, and in some instances, bizarre bayonets. They focus on the end of the bayonet’s story and do not cover its beginning – the conversion of more or less amorphous pieces of iron and steel into finished products. That is the focus of this publication. It might be asked why, out of all the bayonets of the world, these three have been selected since at first sight they appear very ordinary and mundane when compared with some of their more ‘exotic’ brethren. However, as with the arms they were fitted to and whose manufacture has been covered in two earlier companion volumes, they are the only bayonets whose manufacture is described in varying degrees of detail in contemporary publications. They also share another kinship since, like the weapons they fitted, the Russian M.1808 is a direct copy, and the Enfield Pattern 1853 bayonet a descendant of, the French M.1777. This bayonet was a major landmark in socket bayonet design. It may be distasteful and not something to be contemplated lightly, but the socket bayonet’s function at the end of a musket was to penetrate the body of an enemy in close combat. Earlier bayonets having a plain mortice or ‘zig-zag’ slot engaging with a stud on the barrel to hold them in place, might easily be removed from the musket by one or other of the adversaries twisting it in the wrong direction. Honoré Blanc’s design, with its medial locking ring, prevented such accidental removal and became the prototype for many, if not all, socket bayonets which followed through to the end of the 19th century.