13 July 2006
10:25am
Woftam,
Sorry for not answering your intellectual question above. I was distracted by the catcalls from Dorset, England (not to mention by the thought of the increasing difficulty of smuggling these things past Mrs. Coggansfield).
Anyway, yes, the types 1 and 2 appear to be consecutively numbered. I am (very) slowly but (not very) surely working on an article about this, which one day will reveal all. However, in the meantime, Skennerton says that there were 1,000 carbines in the first (1901) batch of carbines, and I am just about certain all these were type 1s. The type 1s all seem to be purpose built (new made, in other words), presumably serial-numbered 1 to 1000 approximately. Number 1 is in the Pattern Room. The highest type 1 serial number I have on record is 913. All were made in 1901, all were rack dated 1901 and all were assigned rack numbers under 1000.
Then there was a second (1903) batch of 500 more carbines, this batch appearing to have been composed exclusively of type 2s (mostly) and type 3s (a few). The lowest type 2 serial number I have is 1054, so presumably these numbers picked up at 1001. At the upper reaches of the serial numbers, within the “normal” range of numbers, the highest I go to is 1592, though then there are more carbines, such as the type 3s, that have higher numbers held over from their previous incarnations. These previously serialed guns are nearly all type 3s (i.e., LMC conversions), though there are a couple of LEC mk. I* conversions in there too (5595E, for example).
Nearly all of the guns in the s/n 1001 to 1500 range are dated 1902 or 1903, are rack dated 1903 and are rack numbered between 1001 and 1500. This is as one would expect.
However, with the exception of two guns (s/n 1501 and s/n 1543), all the guns serialed over 1500 have rack numbers under 1000, which is theoretically not possible as all these lower rack numbers should have been assigned to the first-batch guns. These high serial-numbered guns have various other dating anomalies that I won’t bore you with here. Suffice it to say that I believe most to be replacement guns actually sent out to NZ in, probably, 1904 as replacements for batch-1 guns lost or destroyed in the intervening years. In others words, each was given, I think, the rack number of the gun it was replacing.
So, yes, I believe you are exactly correct, Woftam, about the type 3s being an expedient to make up numbers. In 1901, these carbines (type 1) were the state of the art and carbines were still in general issue, so naturally the NZ order would have been new made. However, in 1902 the SMLE was introduced, so when the NZers asked for another 500 carbines, presumably that same year, RSAF Enfield decided to offload a bunch of by now obsolete surplus LEC mk. I* action bodies by building them into NZ carbines. I suspect, however, that there simply were not enough to make up the full order of 500 and so towards the end of the run some old LMCs (and a handful of stored LEC mk. I*s) were broken up and used for this purpose too.
These LMCs (and the couple of LEC mk. I*s), once having been actual guns, already had serial numbers and so kept them (as on the contemporary RIC carbines, which also kept their original serial numbers). Take at look at the photos below. These show, respectively, the action and barrel serial numbers from my type 1, 2 and 3 NZ carbines.
Notice that on the types 1 and 2, the typeface of the action and barrel numbering is the same, implying that these numbers were applied at the same time.
On the type 3, however, the typeface is clearly different, implying that the action number was applied previously. The highest serial numbered type 3 I know of is 2148, obviously well outside the expected range of numbers for these 1,500 carbines, giving further credence to the idea that the types 3s retained their old numbers.
Sorry to have bored you all.
Coggansfield
P.S. Who has time for shooting when you can ponder the intricacies of serial numbers!
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27/co ... SN/NZ1.jpg[/pic]
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27/co ... SN/NZ2.jpg[/pic]
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y27/co ... Number.jpg[/pic]
