|
|
Sir Charles Ross
Sir Charles Henry Augustus Frederick Lockhart Ross, 9th baronet of Balnagowan (born April
4, 1872, Scotland died June 29, 1942 in St. Petersburg, Florida) was inventor of the Ross
Rifle, used by his own Machine Gun Battery in the Second Boer War and mass-produced for
the Canadian army during World War I.
In an attempt to evade royal taxation on the income from his manufactory, Ross declared
his estate to be a territory of the United States of America, which led to his being named
an outlaw by the British.
Ross studied at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge and was best known as a
capable sharpshooter. He was reputed to have become Britain's largest landholder, with
3,000 tenants on 366,000 acres.
Ross married thrice: First to Winifred Berens, which marriage was dissolved in 1897, then
to Patricia Ellison, who divorced him in 1930, and then, in 1938, to his American
secretary Dorothy Mercado, who inherited Balnagown Castle at Ross' death.
Sir Charles Ross at Eton
Photograph of Sir Charles Ross of Balnagown at Eton in the late 1880s. Sir Charles was
born in 1872 and attended Eton and Cambridge. He was a keen sportsman and while at Eton
designed and patented his first rifle. At Cambridge he had the distinction of being the
first married rowing blue, having married against his mother's wishes shortly after his
twenty-first birthday.
Locals saw Sir Charles as brilliant, but 'a stinker'
The eccentric Scot - inventor, landowner international fugitive -
made a splash in the '20s.
By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL
Published November 26, 2003
ST. PETE BEACH - In 1925, the arrival of Sir Charles Ross' yacht lured a sea of residents
to the Eighth Avenue dock.
"(They) wanted to get a look at that British aristocrat," former Postmaster
Blanche Merry said later. "We'd expected someone all dressed up to kill, but there
was Sir Charles in his pajamas and slippers."
Sir Charles had been an officer and adviser to the Crown. He invented the Ross rifle, was
a fugitive from Scotland and reportedly was the largest landowner in the British Empire.
Once here, Sir Charles fished, exhibited his eccentricity and conducted mysterious
experiments.
"He was very smart," said Jane Triolo, 86, a former St. Pete Beach resident.
"Brilliant. But he could be a yucky man. A stinker from way back."
On April 4, 1872, Sir Charles Henry Augustus Frederick Lockhart Ross was born in Scotland.
He became the Baron of Balnagown at age 11 and was educated at Eton and Trinity College in
Cambridge.
Sir Charles eventually became Britain's largest landowner, possessing an estimated 366,000
acres with 3,000 tenants. When he was 21, Sir Charles settled a financial dispute with his
mother, Frank T. Hurley Jr. wrote, "by stopping up the chimney to her bedroom and
smoking her out of the castle."
In the Boer War at the turn of the 20th century, Sir Charles was a major. From 1915 to
1916, he advised England's war secretary. During World War I, Sir Charles conferred with
President Woodrow Wilson and worked with Gen. John T. Thompson on the Thompson machine
gun.
Among Sir Charles' inventions were harvesting machines, jacketed bullets and the steel
treating process. "The capstone of Sir Charles' inventive career was his Ross rifle,
basic infantry arm of the Canadian army during World War I," Hurley said.
In the 1920s, Sir Charles traveled to Tanganyika to stalk rhino and lion. "Once he
acquired proprietary interest (there) ... he took measures to reduce hunting," wrote
Brian Herne in White Hunters: the Golden Age of African Safaris.
After abdominal surgery in 1925, Sir Charles arrived in Pass-a-Grille wearing slippers and
pajamas - his common attire. "Without batting an eye, he strode down the ramp and
marched up the road to the closest hotel with all the townspeople and half a dozen dogs
following," Blanche Merry said.
One morning, Sir Charles assaulted a boy for not taking him fishing. The boy's mother
bashed "Sir Charles on the head with her frying pan," Hurley wrote. "When
they couldn't revive him ... they dragged him across Gulf Way and dumped him on the
beach.'
From 1930 to 1935, Sir Charles engaged Kenneth Merry - Blanche's husband - to conduct
marine propeller-speed experiments. "The boat was named Tim," said Shirley
Lynch, 77, Merry's daughter. "A torpedolike thing. Didn't look like any other
boat."
To enhance research, Sir Charles relocated his staff of 16 from Washington, D.C., to the
bayside end of 17th Avenue. When the U.S. Navy refused to buy Sir Charles' propeller
patents, the experiments ceased.
The Evening Independent's Paul Davis wrote that Sir Charles divorced Lady Patricia Ross,
his second wife, after she refused to live anywhere in North America.
After being charged with tax evasion in Scotland, fugitive Sir Charles entered his
homeland secretly at night. He drained two fortunes, Hurley wrote, yet often said he was
cash-shy.
"He owed my brother money and didn't want to pay it," Triolo said.
Sir Charles leased a home and owned another on Pass-a-Grille Way. He loved to race his tan
Chrysler Imperial over streets at 80 mph.
"I was afraid of him," Lynch said. "He always kept his hand in his pants
(like Napoleon). I ran away and hid when he visited."
Ailing from diabetes, pneumonia and a heart condition on June 29, 1942, a bedridden Sir
Charles barked his final words to nurse Marie Shepherd: "Get the hell out of
here!"
With his third wife Lady Dorothy nearby, Sir Charles died that afternoon at St. Anthony's
Hospital. He was 70.
British and American newspapers reported his death; it was front-page news locally. In
1945, Sir Charles' ashes were released from the summit of Ben More Assynt in the Scottish
Highlands.
Workshop of Sir Charles Ross
This photograph, gifted by Balnagown Estates, shows the workshop where Sir Charles Ross
worked on his inventions.
Comments
Sir Charles was a keen marksman and won prizes for shooting at Eton, where he designed his
first sporting rifle. He went on to produce a number of accurate high velocity rifles
which were highly regarded by sportsmen, and went into the Boer War with the Ross Machine
Gun Battery, which was equipped with guns designed by him. Much of the preliminary design
and testing of his guns was carried out in this workshop. In 1910 he set up a company in
Quebec to produce a military rifle, the Ross Rifle, which was used by the Canadian Army
during WW1. It proved to be too delicate and unreliable for use in the field and the
enterprise was a disaster for the soldiers who were trying to use it although not for Sir
Charles, who by this time had made a great deal of money out of it. It was the Inland
Revenue's demand for tax on this money which led Sir Charles to have the Balnagown estate
declared US territory and thus outside British jurisdiction. This in turn led to his being
declared an outlaw by the British government.
Ross Rifle
Considered one of the most maligned rifles in military history, the Canadian Ross rifle
was used and subsequently abandoned by Canadian forces during the First World War.
Long and heavy the Ross, first developed in 1903 and named after its developer Sir Charles
Ross, was considered by many a fine target rifle. It was found however to perform poorly
in wet and muddy trench conditions (by this time adopted in its Mk II 1905 and Mk III 1910
guises).
Under such conditions troops found it ill-suited to rapid fire scenarios, frequently
locking, and complaints rapidly reached its chief sponsor, the Canadian Minister of
Militia and Defence Sam Hughes. He nevertheless continued to believe in its strengths even
following professional advice to the contrary from Sir Edwin Alderson. The furore over its
performance ultimately contributed to Hughes' fall from office the following year.
Examples abounded of Canadian troops throwing down the Ross in preference to the British
Lee-Enfield, although the Ross continued to be used for training purposes in both Canada
and England.
Data for Ross Mark II rifle
Caliber: .303 British (7.7x56R mm)
Action: manually operated, straight pull
Overall length: 1320 mm
Barrel length: 711 mm
Weight: 3.90 kg
Magazine capacity: 5 rounds
The origins of the Ross rifle lie in the late-1890s patents of the noble Canadian Sir
Charles Ross, who developed his own pattern of the straight pull rifles, broadly based on
Austrian Mannlicher M1890 / 1895 system. British and Canadian forces tested Ross rifles
circa 1900-1901, but these rifles, while being quite fast in action, completely failed the
reliability tests. The only fact that Britain refused to supply Canada with enough
Lee-Enfield rifles during the second Boer war resulted in adoption of the .303 caliber
Ross Mark I rifle in 1902. First rifles were delivered to Canadian military and Royal
Canadian Mounted Police in 1905. These rifles were manufactured at the Ross Rifle Co, in
Quebec. In 1907, Ross introduced a slightly improved Mark II rifle. Between 1907 and 1912,
Ross turned out several star-marked modifications of the basic mark II pattern, which
differed in barrel lengths, safety arrangements and other such minor modifications. In the
summer of 1911 Canadian army introduced the Mark III Ross rifle, also known as Model 1910.
This rifle was the principal arm of the Canadian corps in Europe during the First World
war, and it turned out as a complete failure. Despite the modified magazine which could be
loaded from stripper clips, the Ross Mark III rifle was too sensitive for dirt and
fouling, it lacked proper initial extraction to handle dirty ammunition. The overly
complicated bolt system of all Marks of the rifle did not helped the proper maintenance n
the field, which also compromised reliability. The worst thing about the Ross system,
however, was that its bolt could be eventually assembled in the wrong order, and in this
case rifle could be assembled and then fired with the bolt not locked to the receiver -
with disastrous results to both shooter and rifle. On the other hand, most Ross rifles
were inherently accurate and served well as a sporter and even match rifles. After the end
of First World War, most military Ross rifles were replaced in Canadian service with
famous SMLE Mark III rifles of British origins, but made in Canada.
All Ross rifles are straight pull, manually operated, magazine fed repeaters. Separate
bolt head with dual opposite locking lugs was inserted into the bolt from the front. The
helical cuts and ribs forced the bolt head to rotate on opening and closing stroke of the
bolt, thus unlocking and locking it to the receiver. The bolt lugs were made either in
solid, Mauser-type pattern, or in interrupted-thread type pattern, depending on the rifle
Mark. There were two patterns of magazines in Ross Rifles. Mark I and Mark II rifles had
so called Harris controlled platform magazine. This magazine was generally similar to
Mauser-type double stack magazine, but could not be loaded from stripper clips. Instead,
there was an exposed finger piece, connected to the magazine follower. To load the Harris
magazine, shooter had to open the bolt, depress the finger piece at the right side of the
stock with its finger to compress the magazine spring and lower the follower, and then
spill the five loose rounds into the magazine opening. Upon release of the finger piece
the magazine follower spring is released, and bolt could be closed, thus completing the
loading cycle. The Mark III rifles had a Lee-type single stack magazine, which protruded
below from the stock. This magazine could be loaded from standard 5-round stripper clips,
and the clip guides were machined into the front of the rear sight block. The type of rear
sight was another change from the Mark II to Mark III. While Mark I and II rifles featured
tangent rear sights, mounted ahead of the receiver, on the top of the barrel, the Mark III
rifles featured a diopter-type rear sight, mounted on the rear bridge of the receiver.
There were other variations in marks and modifications, such as in the shape of stock and
handguards.
Canada formally adopted the Ross rifle in 1905. However, the Ross was not originally
equipped to allow attachment of a bayonet. The bayonet was officially adopted in 1908 -
although patented prior to that in 1907 - but was not issued in Canada until 1910.
These bear the distinctive markings: ROSS RIFLE CO. / QUEBEC / PATENTED 1907 on the
pommel, right (obverse); various acceptance/inspection marks can be found on the left side
(reverse). These marks usually consist of: 2-digit date of manufacture; an "arrowhead
shape in a circle," the Canadian Government Ownership Mark; a "crown over a
number" is a Ross Factory Inspection mark; and an issue date, i.e. 8/10 (August
1910).
About 20,000 of these bayonets and rifles were held by the US military to be used by home
guard(s). US bayonets will bear both Canadian and US markings (ordnance bomb over US).
The .303 Ross Rifle and Bayonet were mainly used by Canadian units in WWI from about 1914
to 1918. They were phased-out - when possible - by the .303 Lee-Enfield Rifle and Bayonet.
Hilt has an oddly "squared" steel pommel with integral
push-button/internal-spring latching mechanism. The muzzle-ring is extended on the Mark I
and employs an integral flat spring; steel crossguard with upper half being a muzzle-ring,
lower half being a quillon with flat drum finial.
Single-edged, knife blade is un-fullered; there are at least three accepted variants.
The scabbards are brown leather.
History
During the Second Boer War a minor diplomatic fight broke out between Canada and the
United Kingdom, after the latter refused to sell or license the Lee Enfield design for
production in Canada. Sir Charles Ross, a Scottish soldier, inventor and businessman,
offered up his new design as a replacement. Ross was well connected in Canadian society,
and eventually landed a contract in 1903 for 12,000 Mark 1 Ross rifles.
Although he claimed the design was entirely his own, the action was actually patterned
very closely off the Steyr 1890. In this design the bolt locking lugs are mounted on a
screw, and when the operating handle is pulled or pushed, the screw turns to screw the
locking lugs into the receiver. The design is generally similar to that used on most
artillery pieces. Unlike the more common bolt actions from the Mauser and Lee Enfield, the
Ross did not need to have the handle rotated to reload, the screw does that, theoretically
offering a higher rate of fire.
Service
The first 1000 rifles were given to the RCMP for testing. Routine inspection before
operational testing found 113 defects bad enough to warrant rejection. One of these was a
poorly designed bolt lock that enabled the bolt to fall right out of the rifle. Another
was poorly tempered component springs that were described as being "soft as
copper." In 1906 the RCMP reverted back to their Model 94 Winchesters and
Lee-Metfords.
The rifle was modified to correct the faults and became the Mark II Ross (Model 05
{1905)). Another minor upgrade resulted in the Mark III, or Model 10 (1910). The Model 10
was the standard infantry weapon of the Canadian Corps when they first arrived in France
during World War I.
It was not long before it became apparent the design was unsuitable for trench life.
Generally when the rifle was used in field conditions the screw threads operating the bolt
lugs would become clogged with dirt and the rifle would jam open or closed. Worse yet,
when the bolt was disassembled for routine cleaning, it could inadvertently be reassembled
in a manner that would fail to lock but still allow a round to be fired. This led to a
number of serious injuries and deaths when the bolt would fly back out of the rifle and
hit the operator. The troops sometimes took Lee Enfields from dead British troops during
battles.
Complaints rapidly reached the rifle's chief sponsor, the Canadian Minister of Militia and
Defence Sam Hughes. He nevertheless continued to believe in its strengths, following
professional advice from Sir Edwin Alderson: in particular the Ross was more accurate at
long range than the SMLE, addressing a serious problem British and Canadian troops had
faced with the accurate long range fire from the 7mm Mauser during the Boer War.
Replacement
By July 1916 Sir Douglas Haig, the new Commander-in-Chief, had ordered the replacement of
all Ross rifles by the Lee-Enfield, which was finally available in quantity. Hughes
refused to accept there were problems with the Ross, and it took the intervention of many
influential people to persuade him otherwise. In November 1916, Hughes resigned, after Sir
Robert Borden's decision to appoint a Minister of Overseas Forces. Ross rifles were then
used in training roles, both in Canada and the UK, to free up more Lee-Enfields. More were
shipped to the US in 1917 for the same reasons, freeing up supplies of the Springfield
1903 rifle.
Around the same time, the Dominion Rifle Factory (Quebec City) converted a number of
Rosses to light machine guns (LMGs), under the guidance of a designer named Huot. It was
ugly but effective, feeding from a drum, and cheaper than a Lewis Gun. Unfortunately,
despite the Canadian Corps' facing a severe shortage of LMGs, protracted trials led to it
being rejected for flimsy reasons. (Neither would it appear in the 1940s, when surplus
Ross rifles were sent to a desperate Britain.)
Sporting variant
In 1907 a version of the Mark II was produced in a new and very powerful .280"
caliber "sporting" round. The new round required strengthening of the bolt and
receiver area, but the rifle was otherwise only slightly different from the .303 Mark
II's. The problems with the Ross in combat were generally that it was a sporting rifle
asked to work in the trenches, so it might not be surprising that in the original sporting
role the Ross became quite popular. The new round gained it a fearsome reputation for
medium sized game, and was a common weapon on safari.
[edit]
Source
"Huot", in Bernard Fitzsimons (general editor), The Encyclopedia of Twentieth
Century Weapons and Warfare (Phoebus/BBC, 1978), Volume 13, page 1385.
The .280 Ross Rifle, A Fast Shady Lady
By Erin Boyd
I was visiting a friend who has a very extensive array of firearms and their various
components. If you needed a part for your 98 Mauser for example, he would fossick about in
his armoury and eventually come up with several for you to choose from. Want some rings
for your newly acquired Sako Hunter? Another trip into the den and out he comes with a
shoebox stuffed to the brim with used scope mounts of all sizes and descriptions. Sure
enough, there are several different styles to fit your obsolete darling. For the sake of
anonymity we will henceforth refer to this gentleman as 'The Squirrel.'
As to be expected we were soon involved in deep discussion on some firearm-related gossip
over an afternoon cuppa. The .280 Ross was briefly mentioned in passing.
"Wait, wait!" exclaimed the Squirrel, leaping to his feet. "Don't
panic!" He then disappeared into his warren.
A little while later he emerged with a contented smile on his face and a very long
sporting rifle, with a rich red patina, grasped in his hand, "I knew I had one of
these around here somewhere." He carefully passed it over for my perusal.
The rifle was slender and well made, with an elegant Schnabel tipped walnut stock that had
excellent point pattern, wrap round chequering on the grip and forearm. It had an
odd-looking bolt action. It felt right in the hand and exuded that air of quality and
mystique that only a pretty lady with a shady past can.
"Ross Rifle Co." and "Canada M 10" was stamped into the large
receiver, and ".280 Ross proved 28 tons" into the barrel. It was designed and
manufactured by Sir Charles Ross, a Scottish Baronet, inventor, and among many other
things, one time owner of the fabled Ngoro Ngoro Crater game park in Tanzania. This
strong, straight pull bolt action was to earn itself a very shady reputation indeed.
Some background information
Ross's original design was in .303 British and intended to create a superior military
rifle. At the time of the Boer War there was some diplomatic discord between Great Britain
and Canada. The British Government declined Canada when they requested to be supplied
with, or be given rights to manufacture under license, the Lee Enfield service rifle for
the Canadian Military. The upshot of this was a decision by the Canadian government to
manufacture their own infantry rifle.
Ross had developed a hunting rifle with a straight pull bolt action that was manufactured
in Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A. He claimed it as his own design, but in fact it had many
features in common with the Austrian Steyr straight pull model of 1890, and inherited the
design faults unique to that action. Ross was very well connected in upper Canadian
society and much politicking resulted in the issuing of contracts in 1902 for his newly
formed Canadian company to provide 12,000 Mark 1 Ross rifles to the Government.
The first 1000 Mk. 1 rifles were issued to the Royal NorthWest Mounted Police. Routine
inspection found 113 defects warranting rejection. The rifle was found unsatisfactory for
many reasons. One of these was a poorly designed bolt lock that enabled the bolt to fall
from the rifle and be lost, thus rendering the rifle useless. Another was poorly tempered
component springs that were described as being "soft as copper." In 1906 the
R.C.M.P. reverted back to their Model 94 Winchesters and Lee Metfords.
The rifle was redesigned to correct the myriad faults and called the MK. 11 Ross. The
final design was the Mark 111 or Model 10 (1910). Many changes had been made to the
original Mk. 1 Ross that altered the rifle almost beyond recognition.
Despite all of this, it was still a problem fraught design. The Mk. 111 (or Model 10 Ross)
was the rifle Canadian troops carried into action in France during World War I, and it
failed dismally under combat conditions. Serious problems with reliability included
failures to extract a fired case, and constant jamming of the bolt due to field debris.
Many troops were killed by the enemy while attempting to clear malfunctions.
Another extremely undesirable fault was that after disassembling the bolt, it could be
incorrectly reassembled. In that case the rifle would pick up a round and chamber it, and
the extractor would hold the round against the bolt face, but the seven large locking lugs
would not be in battery. The striker would be cocked, and if the trigger were pulled the
rifle would fire with the bolt unlocked. Several cases are recorded of serious injury or
death from bolt blowback.
Regarding the Ross as more of a threat to their lives than the Kaiser's soldiers, the
troops threw away their Ross rifles en masse at the earliest opportunity, snatching up Lee
Enfields from dead Tommys. The Ross was withdrawn from service in 1915 and replaced by the
Lee Enfield.
It did establish a very good record for accuracy, winning the English 1000 yard Bisley
Match three times consecutively. Many Ross Rifles also saw service in the Russian Army,
and it was used with great success by them in the Olympics in a modified form and caliber
(7.62 x 54R) as a moving event type target rifle. It was also retained for several years,
with good results, as a specialized sniper weapon by the Canadian Army.
The .280 Ross Hunting Rifle
"Have you got any rounds for this rifle?" I ask the Squirrel, as he looks
intently into my grandfatherly face.
"You just don't know, you young fellows of today, you just don't know how it is, just
how much stress you put on an old pensioner like me."
Shaking his head and muttering he disappears yet again into the darkness. When he
eventually emerges back into the sunlight, he is holding a couple of cartridge packets and
several loose rounds in his hands.
Introduced in the Mk 11 action in 1907 as a sporting round, the .280 Ross is a large
semi-rimmed case, bigger and longer than the 7mm Remington Magnum that it preceded by over
60 years. The actual caliber of the projectile is .289" and can be duplicated by
bumping up a .284" (7 mm) in a special die and swaging it to size if you want to
reload this baby.
The original factory loads were a pointed FMJ 180 grain target round at 2800 fps, and a
146 grain bronze point type spitzer hunting bullet at 3100 fps. This was in 1907 remember,
before the word Magnum had been co-opted by the shooting fraternity, and without the
advantage of modern slow burning powders. The .280 Ross is not far behind the performance
of the excellent 7mm Remington Magnum.
This was truly an outstanding hunting round, and it was widely praised. It was a quick and
spectacular killer on deer sized game; unfortunately, foolhardy hunters were encouraged to
tackle larger game for which it was not designed.
Bullet types were generally limited to FMJ and soft point styles. The jacketed expanding
bullet technology of that time was not developed enough to understand the special
requirements of very high velocity. Many soft point hunting projectiles over-expanded and
broke up with insufficient penetration when striking large or dangerous game at high
velocities.
The case of a refined English gent named Grey will provide an excellent example. Grey and
two companions were hunting driven lion from horse back in the African Savannas, early in
the last century. Grey was armed with a .280 Ross rifle. The agreement was that if the
beaters put up a lion, the riders were to merge together before an attempt was made to
take it. The beaters did put up two lions, and Grey's companions were a considerable
distance away.
Grey foolishly decided to take the male lion himself with his .280. He rode close and
fired a shot into it, wounding but not disabling the beast. Understandably, the lion took
exception to this unprovoked assault and charged, knocking Grey to the ground and biting
and clawing him to teach him some manners, before bounding off into the long grass.
Although terribly mutilated, Grey did not die straight away. He managed to communicate to
his companions that his fate was entirely due to his own stupid actions and not the fault
of the beaters. He died several days later in a hospital. The wounded lion was tracked and
dispatched by Grey's companions. Such incidents only added to the shady reputation of the
.280 Ross as unreliable cartridge in an unreliable rifle.
The Ross Action
The action on this Model 10 Ross sporter is a well engineered, straight pull bolt of
robust proportions. To enable locking, the bolt head was manufactured with a helical
thread on the shaft and an interrupted thread locking system of seven lugs. The helical
thread on the shaft caused the bolt head to rotate when pushed or pulled, screwing the
locking lugs into or out of battery in the receiver.
This locking system is very strong and the same as used on heavy artillery pieces. To
operate the action the user only has to smartly pull the bolt handle straight back and
then shove it forward. This simple movement unlocks the lugs, extracts and ejects the
empty case on the rearward stroke, then chambers a new cartridge and locks the bolt closed
on the forward stroke. It is very fast and smooth to operate. There is a safety lever
conveniently mounted on the top of the bolt handle. A rivet was put into late production
bolts to prevent incorrect assembly and solve the bolt blowback problem, but this came far
too late. The rifle had already earned its infamous reputation by then.
An idea of the strength of this action can be gleaned from the prominent stamp,
"proved 28 tons." This converts to a working pressure of 62,000 psi, higher than
any modern magnum by about 7000 psi. Most English sporting rifle manufacturers of the
period proved their rifles, at the Birmingham Proof House, to 18 tons psi.
The magazine holds four of the .404 Jeffery size rounds in a staggered formation, allowing
the bottom of the magazine to be flush with the lines of the stock. The barrel on this
rifle is twenty seven and a half inches long with a very large and nicely shaped
reinforce. The barrel twist rate is in the region of 1 turn in 9 inches.
Affixed to the barrel is a curious ramp mounted rear sight, a single folding leaf
calibrated out to five hundred yards; a somewhat optimistic vision of the flat shooting
capabilities of this century old hotrod. The front sight is a tall ramp mounted blade.
The trigger on the Ross is a two-stage type with a very clean and crisp let off. This is
due to using a roller bearing and a conventional sear. There is also a trigger connected
lug that locks the bolt in position when the trigger is pulled, to eliminate any chance of
the bolt rotating out of battery on firing.
Overall it is a very interesting rifle that was in some ways decades ahead of its time,
and with a rather sad history, too. The potential was there for it to become a great rifle
had more thought been put into how the bolt was assembled.
There were other rifles chambered for the 280 Ross. One that I know of is a Westley
Richards built on a magnum length, square bridge, Obendorf Mauser action.
When I took the rifle back after the photo session, my friend gave me a mischievous grin,
"I see you have cleaned and oiled it, as well as linseeding the stock. Did you take
the opportunity to sight it in for me?"
"I couldn't see a rivet on the bolt" was my lame reply. "I didn't want the
shady lady to take me out."
Inside the Ross Rifle Factory, Quebec City, ca. 1900-1905
To Sir Sam Hughes and other politicians, the Ross Rifle had the advantage of being
Canadian-made. However, the Ross factory in Quebec City could not withstand the severe
blow of the challenge to the weapon's reliability. The firm was expropriated by the
government in the spring of 1917.
The Ross Rifle Scandal
During the South African War of 1899-1902, the Canadian government had experienced serious
problems in obtaining weapons from Britain, on whom it relied for its supplies. In
particular the .303 Lee-Enfield rifle was unavailable, and efforts to persuade Birmingham
Small Arms Company to set up a branch factory in Canada to manufacture the rifle were
unsuccessful. Sir Wilfred Laurier, then the Prime Minister, was persuaded by his Militia
Minister, Sir Frederick Borden, that Canada would have to make its own rifle. A new rifle,
developed by Sir Charles Ross, had recently appeared on the market. It was a fine target
and sporting weapon. Ross came to Ottawa and met with a committee set up to evaluate his
rifle. One of the committee members was Sam Hughes, who immediately liked the weapon. It
was put through a series of tests, including comparison tests with the Lee-Enfield. In
spite of the fact that the Ross jammed and often misfired, the committee recommended its
adoption and manufacture in Canada. What "small problems" there were, Sir
Charles Ross assured them, could be eliminated with the appropriate modifications. Sam
Hughes steadfastly defended the Ross rifle in the House of Commons and was opposed to
replacing it. Events were to show that he was tragically wrong.
In trench conditions, surrounded by mud and filth, and when it was essential to have a
reliable weapon, the Ross was definitely out of place. It had a long barrel and was
difficult to use in the trench's confined spaces, and it frequently jammed. It was indeed
a fine weapon - on a firing range under controlled conditions. But the First Division's
stand at Ypres in the face of a gas attack, Canadian soldiers threw away their Ross rifles
in despair and frustration, and picked up Lee-Enfields from dead British soldiers on the
battlefield.
In spite of this, the Second Division went to France with Ross rifles and again the
results were much the same, with solders throwing away jammed weapons. By July 1916 Sir
Douglas Haig, the new Commander-in-Chief, had ordered the replacement of all Ross rifles
by the Lee-Enfield, then becoming widely available. To the end, Hughes refused to accept
that there were problems with the Ross, and it took the intervention of many influential
people to persuade him otherwise. In November 1916, Hughes resigned, after Sir Robert
Borden's decision to appoint a Minister of Overseas Forces. He died in 1921 at the age of
69.
Ross rifle
Ross
Type rifle
Nation(s) of Origin Canada
Era Modern
History
Date of design 1903
Production period 1903-?
Service duration ?
Operators Canada,
War service World War I
Variants Mark II (1905)
Mark II .280 (1907)
Mark III (1910)
Number built
Specifications
Type battle rifle
Caliber .303 (7.7 x 56R mm)
Barrel length 711 mm
Ammunition .303 British
Magazine 5 rounds
Action straight-pull bolt action rifle
Length 1320 mm
Weight 3.90 kg
Rate of fire N/A
Muzzle velocity
Effective range
The Ross rifle was a straight-pull bolt action .303 rifle produced in Canada from 1903
until the middle of World War I, when it was withdrawn from service due to unreliability
in service conditions. Although the Ross .303 was a superior marksman rifle, its
components proved too easily clogged in the dirt of World War I trenches. A sporting
version using a new .280" "magnum" round was produced for some time, and
gathered a much better reputation. |
