Page 26 - Auction84-Book2

"...for a fighting weapon the best yet invented is the American Winchester repeating rifle..." -Sir Henry Morton Stanley
LOT 1022
Internationally Historic and Iconic Winchester Model 1876 “Centennial” Lever Action Rifle, Watson of London Retailer Marked, Owned and Used by British-American Adventurer Sir Henry Morton Stanley per the Stanley Estate Sale at Christie’s in London in 2002 - Serial no. 8512, 45-75 cal., 28 inch round bbl., blue finish, walnut stock. “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” the famous Stanley quote, has been made familiar to hundreds of millions as taught in schools and recorded in books and newspaper articles for over a century. Stanley’s heroic and true exploits of grand and dangerous safaris and stories of big game hunting and adventure through deepest, darkest Africa spurred the imaginations of all and resulted in the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan series and other books, as well as countless movies. This historic Model 1876 Winchester Second Model was manufactured in 1879 and was sold in
lot 55 at Christie’s as part of “The Africa Sale Including the Henry Morton Stanley Collection” and identified as “Supplied to Stanley by Watson’s
as part of the equipping of his Congo Free State venture.” A copy of the catalog is included.
In 1879, Stanley purchased from Watson Bros of 4 Pall Mall, London, a weapon that he was to use for the next ten years. It was an 1876 Model Winchester lever-action repeating rifle. The caliber of this, his most famous Winchester was .45-75, firing a 350 grain bullet from a 28” barrel and Stanley claimed it was; ‘for a fighting weapon the best yet invented’.
In 1886, Stanley was in the Congo, fighting his way towards modern Uganda to relieve the governor of Sudan’s Equatorial Province, Emin Bey. ‘Emin Pasha’ as he was known, was on the run from the Mahdi, who had over-run Khartoum and killed General Gordon. Stanley set out to relieve him from a besieged position on Lake Albert. To get there he had to travel up the unexplored Aruwimi River. Stanley’s account makes it appear to have been a fight with disease and terrain and local tribes, all equally hostile and dangerous. He recalls a shot with his Winchester, taken at 150 yards to fell the vocally-aggressive leader of a tribal war party, rallying
his troops to attack Stanley’s weakened column. ‘The rifle did its work’, he wrote: and saved the day.
The newer twelve-shot Model 1876 firing the more powerful .45-75 W.C.F. cartridge certainly added to his expedition’s firepower and no doubt provided him additional security, especially considering he was at risk from large and dangerous African wildlife during his adventures that a man wouldn’t want to face with a .44-40.
Sir Henry Morton Stanley was born in 1841 as John Rowlands in Wales
and abandoned by his mother and father and was raised by other family members and spent a decade in a workhouse before emigrating from the U.K. to the U.S. in 1859. From these humble beginnings, he rose to become a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and Member of Parliament. He adopted the name of a merchant friend in New Orleans, Henry Hope Stanley, and served in the Civil War first as a Confederate soldier and then as a “galvanized Yankee” after being captured at the Battle of Shiloh. He became a journalist and adventurer after the war for the New York Herald in the Middle East and Africa. This is the most famous and relevant period of his life, and his several publications of his adventures in Africa note that he was armed with Winchester rifles in addition to a British double barrel elephant rifle.
He famously rescued Dr. David Livingstone in the fall of 1871 and reportedly greeted him with “Dr. Livingston, I presume?” His account, published as “How I Found Livingstone: Travels, Adventures and
Sir Henry Morton Stanley
Discoveries in Central Africa: Including an Account of Four Months’ Residence with Dr. Livingstone” in 1872 is one of the classic adventure
tales from the age of European exploration and imperialism in Africa.
After Livingstone’s death, Stanley continued exploring Africa and sought the sources of the Nile and the Congo. He published “Through the Dark Continent; Or, The Sources of the Nile: Around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and Down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean” in 1878.
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