Gazette: An Interesting Exchange Too Long for Letters

The following correspondence regarding two articles that appeared in our March/April issue were too lengthy for the Letters column but, we felt, too interesting (and, frankly, too juicy) to abbreviate.  —The Editors

For many years following my retirement from Holland & Holland, I have not reacted to articles in various gun and hunting magazines, although I might have had disagreements with the contents. I have decided that 2009 brings change in many positive ways, and I can also now speak my mind. Unfortunately, the first victim of my opinions is a good friend. Douglas Tate, who I have known for many years and consider a knowledgeable friend, has fallen, in my opinion, for that horrible writer’s mistake: an unwillingness to upset those who provide copy and advertising.
    Doug writes about the Holt’s December auction (“Clapton Guns Auctioned,” Game & Gun Gazette) in glowing terms. This is doing the general public a disservice; the auction was down considerably and many lots did not sell, including most of Eric Clapton’s collection. Prices realized, such as £100,000 for an unfired pair of Holland & Holland Royal Over & Unders, were certainly not impressive, to put it mildly. It cost more to make them. The good news is that prices at auction will now come back to realistic levels and that bit players will leave the field and real experts, such as Holt’s, will be doing most of the gun auction business. As buying at auction is always a bit of a gamble, especially for the non-initiated, this is good news indeed.
Then the article on Frederick Beesley (“Frederick Beesley: A Patent Success”). An excellent second-tier gunmaker in his day, with a fertile mind. He sold his action design to Purdey’s, I believe, because he needed money. To call this the best design for a self-opening action, however, is, to say the least, ludicrous. Purdey’s, probably for marketing reasons, has chosen to stay with this design throughout the years, notwithstanding the fact that it has been superseded by far-superior designs since. Technically, cocking a gun on closing rather than opening does not make sense. For smaller bores such as 28 and .410 and with double rifles, the extra power required to close the guns is actually very irritating and sometimes a major handicap. The best thing said about the action is probably the legend that Purdey’s staff told potential customers that this hard closing posed no problems, as “their customers never did close their own guns.”
    Douglas makes it worse by stating the action has been copied by gunmakers from Russia to Spain and then mentions some select English makers as well. In Russia one gun was made in Tulla called the Russian Purdey, which was made as a direct copy, but it did not succeed and was a terrible clonker. I have never seen a Spanish gun with a Purdey action. In England the only ones who have copied the Purdey action are ex-craftsmen from Purdey’s, as that is what they learned to make. In Spain Arrizabalaga, Garbi, Grulla, AyA, Ugartechea, Sarasqueta, etc. have always made copies of the Holland & Holland action and sidelock, as have the gunmakers from Belgium, such as LeBeau, Thonon, Thys, FN, Bury, etc.; and Italy, such as Bertuzzi, Fausti, etc.—and so we can go on around the gunmaking world for their side-by-sides. Even very recently Tony Galazan chose to incorporate the simple and straightforward H&H assisted-opening system in the RBL guns as an option.
    Come on, Doug, copy may be hard to come by, but the Beesley action became outmoded in the late 19th Century, and I know you well enough that you must agree with that statement. You may rightfully consider me somewhat biased, but then explain why top gunmakers such as F.lli Rizzini and Lebeau-Courally do not build on the Purdey action.
    Jan Roosenburg
    Via e-mail

Holt’s Auctioneers responds:
I was amazed to receive your e-mail re the Eric Clapton collection. We don’t know who Mr. Roosenburg is, and we certainly refute his false accusation about the sale of the EC collection. We sold the entire collection for a total hammer price of £443,000 (plus 20-percent buyers’ premium) on the day of the sale to an assortment of individual and trade purchasers. They were genuine sales at auction and none were bought in, and I would like to know on what evidence Mr. Roosenburg bases his wild and wholly inaccurate accusations.
    Perhaps you would like to pass this information on to Mr. Roosenburg and request a written retraction of his accusations together with an apology.
    For your information, our sales “back office” system automatically generates the realized sale prices and uploads them to the online catalogue. We cannot input inaccurate sales data, because the system just does not allow it. The online catalogue and our Website sit on separate and unrelated servers with links between them from selected pages; the online catalogue server is maintained by the company that provides our back-office system. They do this for hundreds of other auctioneers so are pretty tight on preventing potential misrepresentation.
    Andrew J. Orr
    Media Manager
    Holt’s Auctioneers

James Purdey & Sons responds:
We have received your e-mail together with the one from Jan Roosenburg about the Purdey/Beesley assisted-opening action. We have given a lot of thought to Jan’s remarks and opinions, which of course he is perfectly entitled to make, but, as you would expect, we disagree with several of his points and therefore would comment as follows:
    The merits of the Beesley/Purdey assisted-opening action have long been the subject of debate within Purdey’s. Gunmakers back in the 19th Century were highly competitive with each other and were always trying to find new ideas and patentable USPs [unique selling propositions] for their products, including a means of making their guns work faster, because among the richer clientele of those times the ability to shoot enormous bags was important to their reputation—and the faster they could shoot, the more birds they would bring down and the more guns would be sold.
    Beesley was an ambitious Purdey actioner who was dismissed by James Purdey for spending too much time in the pub! He sold his patented design for an assisted-opening action to James Purdey after this episode and went on to set up his own well-respected business.
    The H&H mechanism was also designed by an outsider and is a version of the Rogers Cocking patent of 1881, in which the mechanism is cocked on opening by a seesaw lever. At that time many makers of sidelock guns used versions of this design.
    The Beesley/Purdey mechanism uses the mainsprings to help open the gun and also to power the tumblers. Cocking on closing actually makes perfect sense. The Beesley/Purdey mechanism does have to be made to exacting standards and would not be cost effective for most makers. If the Purdey action could have been made at a lower cost, it almost certainly would have been more widely used.
    One of the advantages of the Purdey self-opener is that it is a very well proven design, having been in continuous production since 1880 and at a rough estimate built into about 15,000 guns. As with all Purdey gun components, it has been subject to a policy of continual improvement, and it seems to have satisfied a large number of customers, very few of whom have ever requested Rogers cocking actions in place of the Beesley. It is certainly more complex than other designs, which is why it is expensive to make and why other gunmakers prefer to use cheaper alternatives yet say theirs are better. They would, wouldn’t they, but the Beesley action has stood the test of time. It works very well indeed and very reliably, and it is robust.
    Even without the help of the apocryphal loader, you can shoot a Purdey very fast if you put your mind to it, and suffer no strain at all if you get the hang of setting your hands just a little farther apart to provide greater leverage. We all use Purdeys to shoot and have never found them hard work or to cause RSIs (repetitive strain injuries).
    Another advantage of the Purdey design is that because there is some resistance when closing the gun, owners (and loaders) are less inclined to slam the gun shut and crack or break stocks, which can happen all too easily with a Rogers cocking action. The Beesley/Purdey, in a way, is its own shock absorber.
    There is then the matter of Rogers cocking guns sometimes being hard to open—rather than the Purdey being hard to close. That is because there has to be a distribution of energy over the cycle of firing, reloading and cocking, and the resistance in this cycle will be affected by the quality of manufacture of the mechanism and of regulation, such as getting all the angles of the cocking rods, cams and levers absolutely right. A Purdey distributes this “load” more evenly, and this is a vital aspect of the regulation of the gun. The endurance of the Beesley/Purdey design is due in no small measure to this regulating aspect and the precision of its manufacture.
    Within the world of guns and shooting there are bound to be fans as well as critics of the Purdey/Beesley self-opener. Taken by and large, those who shoot with Purdey’s swear by their guns, and customers continue to want the action in new guns. As the makers, we at Purdey’s believe that amongst all the different ways of assisting the opening of a gun, the Beesley/Purdey mechanism continues to be the best for performance and for reliability, if not for simplicity or low cost.
    We hope that the foregoing will be helpful. Please let us know if you have any queries or require further information.
    Nigel Beaumont, Chairman
    Peter Blaine, Gun Sales Manager
    Richard Purdey, Chairman (ret.)