For Want Of Cocking The Hammer
On the Model 1858 Starr, the only way to cock the hammer was by pulling back the trigger, referred to in company literature and hereafter as the firing lever. When in SA-only mode, the hammer was cocked with the firing lever, but to actually discharge the shot, one had to shift the trigger finger behind the firing lever to depress the exposed sear mounted at the rear of the triggerguard. If the shooter wanted to activate the gun’s DA feature, a sliding extension at the rear of the firing lever was pushed downward so it protruded far enough to automatically trip the sear at the end of the pull stroke and discharge the gun in the manner of a conventional DA revolver. With a little dexterity and care, a shooter could set the firing lever for DA but still shoot SA by halting the trigger pull after the hammer cocked but before its stroke concluded in tripping the sear. That’s easier said than done under stress.
The hammer’s thumb spur was surely a source of confusion, too, comparable to putting a doorknob on a door that could be used to unlock it but not pull it open. The spur just invited thumb cocking, but was intended only for placing the hammer at half cock, loading, and de-cocking without firing. Trying to force the hammer further back could damage the action since it jammed the hand against the rachet lug of the stationary cylinder. I believe this was the gun’s fatal flaw in military service. It was just different enough from what the troops were accustomed to that it confounded and frustrated many of them to the point they rejected it. Its operation was not only counterintuitive to them but required the kind of fine motor skills that humans lose in high-stress situations … like battles.
Despite its many merits, the Model 1858 Starr was a bust in military service, and its fate was a classic case of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater. You could say the means by which the 1858 Starr operated was an engineering dead end, but I think that’s only true in the sense that its unique manual of arms wasn’t as readily accepted as its inventor, Ebenezer Starr, imagined it would be. Mechanically, the concept of using the trigger stroke to first rotate the cylinder and cock the hammer, and then conclude by actuating the independent function of discharging the firearm by depressing an exposed sear positioned at the rear of the trigger guard, was sound. This reappears in many successful American firearms of the early metallic cartridge era, particularly the small caliber solid frame revolvers of Harrington & Richardson.
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