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With a story that runs nearly the entire length of the 20th Century, the iconic top-break British Webley in .455 Caliber Eley is a beast.

My personal interest in the Webley, specifically the bonkers-large Mark VI, which entered service with a 6-inch barrel standard, dates to watching old war movies and TV shows as a kid in the 1970s and 80s, and there were plenty to choose from.

According to IMFDB, they appeared in the hands of Gary Cooper, Peter Lorre, Peter O’ Toole (several times, including “Lawrence of Arabia”), Clark Gable, Richard Burton, Gregory Peck, Bob Hoskins (anachronistically in “Zulu Dawn” of all things!), Burt Lancaster, James Keach, Edward Woodward, Michael Crawford, Christopher Lee, and so on.

It was just a commanding piece.

I mean, look at it:

Plus, the beautiful rimmed .455 rounds are short and almost comically fat. Stout like a British bulldog. A sumo wrestler compared to the more puny contemporaries such as the 8mm French used in that country’s M1892 revolver, the Russian 7.65×38 used in the Tsarist-era Nagant, and the rimmed 9mm round used by the Japanese Type 26 revolver (the latter of which only generated a velocity of about 500 fps!).

I recall reading a book on guerrilla warfare weapons, published in 1990, that noted the Webley was still often encountered in the hands of insurgents as flotsam from the old British colonial empire and was “a prestigious man stopper.”

Only it wasn’t really.

Sure, any time you get hit by a 218-265 grain bullet, it is going to smart, but, seeing as the projectile typically only traveled at about 600 to 750 fps, the energy imparted on impact was only in the 220-300 ft./lb. range, which is about on average to what you get out of .38 Special (and that’s not even +P loads, either). This was compounded by at least five different generations of service bullets and loads for the .455, all attempting to make it more effective, though they never came close to modern self-defense designs.

But, when used at bad-breath range against the Kaiser’s skinny Landsers on the Western Front in 1915, or poorly clad indigenous warriors and bandits in far-off lands who are probably already fighting parasites and poor diets, it likely worked just fine.

Still, the large 2.5-pound square-butt revolver could prove a useful club when needed.

Fairburn and Sykes, who knew a thing or ten about the Webley in service, had the following passage in their 1942 “Shooting to Live” Commando primer in the chapter on “Stopping Power.”

We shall choose for our first instance one relating to the big lead bullet driven at a moderate velocity. On this occasion, a Sikh constable fired six shots with his .455 Webley at an armed criminal of whom he was in pursuit, registering five hits. The criminal continued to run, and so did the Sikh, the latter clinching the matter finally by battering in the back of the criminal’s head with the butt of his revolver. Subsequent investigations showed that one bullet only, and that barely deformed, remained in the body, the other four having passed clean through.

A closer look at the gun

The Webley top-break revolver itself dates to the company’s original Mark I service revolver, which was adopted by the British military in 1887, starting around £3 each, and a host of generational changes until the wheel gun seen in this piece, the Mark VI, arrived on the scene in May 1915.

A top-break six-shooter, it replaced the shorter Mark V, which had a rounded bird’s head style grip, with a much larger gun using a squared butt, 6-inch barrel, and a somewhat adjustable front sight. Best yet for His Majesty’s bean counters, the wartime finish Mark VI only cost some 51 shillings per gun, or about £2.5.

More gun for less money has always been popular.

Approximately 280,000 Mark VI Service models were produced during the war, starting around serial number 135,000. Our example, featured in this article, is serial number 245,288, bearing a 1917 Webley roll mark on the frame, along with corresponding Birmingham proof marks and British military broad arrow and GR acceptance marks. These weapons were not only issued to officers and sergeants but also to artillery, machine gun, and tank crews. They saw further hard use in trench raids and tunnel warfare under said trenches.

Better-grade models of the same gun, based on the old W&S Target, but with a higher fit and finish, were available for personal purchase through the Army & Navy Co-operative store. Many gentlemen officers chose to acquire their Webley in such a fashion, while others simply went with the issued revolver. Aftermarket accessories included the early Prideaux and Watson pattern speed loaders, and the Greener-produced Pritchett bayonet, although none were made in quantity.

Second Lieutenant JRR Tolkien, the future author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” shipped off for France a year after graduating from Oxford. As a young officer with the 11th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, in June 1916, he saw service at the grueling military charnel house that was the Battle of the Somme, where some 57,000 casualties were suffered in the first day alone– making it the bloodiest day in British military history. Both at the Somme and a later trench raid near Thiepval, Tolkien had with him an early first-year Mark VI Service, serial number 169,710. It is now in the Imperial War Museum, complete with its lanyard.

The Mark VI also saw service in the sky and on the sea.

While officially replaced, the big .455 Webley remained in secondary service and was even preferred by many as their go-to sidearm.

An Irish tale

The Webley Mark VI entered Irish service in several ways, both via IRA-looted police, British Army, and auxiliary barracks during the 1919 to 1921 Irish War of Independence, and as guns handed over to the new Provisional pro-treaty government in 1922 and subsequently used against the anti-treaty IRA during the follow-on Irish Civil War. The Oglaigh na hÉireann (IRA) circulated printed training memos on the Mark VIas early as November 1921.

A circa 1917 Mark VI was recovered from the late General Michael Collins after he was killed in an anti-Treaty ambush in West Cork in 1922. The same year, another circa 1917 Mark VI was used in the assassination of anti-Irish  British Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in London.

Second-hand Shaved Webleys

With the adoption of the Browning Hi-Power in British —and later Commonwealth —service in the 1950s, the final stocks of Webley Mark VIs began to move into the commercial market.

Surplus Irish guns met a similar fate when Sam Cummings of Alexandria, Virginia-based Interarmco (Interarms) made a sweet deal with the Dublin government in 1959 for almost all of the old Republic’s unneeded hardware at scrap-per-ton cash-and-carry prices including a couple hundred Model 1921 Thompsons, 801 Lewis guns, 9 water-cooled Vickers machine guns, 17 Mark I and Mark II 18-pounder field guns, 22 4.5-inch howitzers, four 3-inch anti-artillery guns, 51 Browning aircraft machine guns, pallets of Enfield .303 rifles, and crates of Webley revolvers.

The Webleys were soon sold off through mail order outlets, Hunters’ Lodge, Potomac Arms, and others, for the bargain basement price of $14.50 in NRA Good condition and $19.95 in NRA Very Good Condition with .455 milsurp rounds at a pricy $1.50 per 24 (two, 12-round paper packets). Adjusted for inflation, that’s $165-$225 per revolver, and $17 for 24 rounds of ammo.

Eventually, the stock of Webleys outlasted the stock of surplus .455 and British ammo makers such as Kynoch and Eley trimmed back on production of new cartridges, further driving up the price of the increasingly hard-to-find rounds. To sate the demand, distributors by the 1960s hit on the concept of shaving the rear of the Webley’s six-shot cylinder to allow the rimless .45 ACP round to work* in a pinch, if used in company with half-moon clips as used with the old M1917 DA .45 revolvers. The .45 Auto Rim, made for use with the M1917 sans clips, would work as well.

*A word of strong warning should be imparted when talking about using .45 ACP in a .455 Webley. It is inadvisable to run full-power commercial .45 ACP in any top-break revolver, including one of those beefy, seemingly indestructible Webley Mark VIs. Special low-power loads (under 13,200 psi vs the standard pressure of 21,000 psi seen in regular loads) are now on the market, made by Steinel specifically for use in shaved cylinder Mark VIs.

Speaking of ammo, Bannerman (Graf), Fiocchi, and Steinel all make new runs of .455 Eley/Webley loads as well, running about $60-$70 for a box of 50. Other than that, running this old revolver is more in the realm of handloaders who dig heavy bullets over small loads, but it is better than just having a “wall hanger.”

No matter what the backstory on this gun, it remains a “Cool Revolver.”

Just ask John Wick.