POTD: Firing a Rope – RFI No.1 Mk 3* Line Throwing Gun

Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have an SMLE that got sent to sea. This is a Rifle Factory Ishapore No.1 Mk 3* line throwing gun in 303 British.

India kept the SMLE going long after Britain moved on. Ishapore was still building No.1 Mk 3* rifles into the 1960s, and this one started out in 1963 as a grenade launching rifle. That is where the copper wire wrapped around the forend comes from. Firing a grenade off the muzzle beats up a wood stock, so those rifles got wire bound at the front to keep things from splitting. The British had done the same with their EY rifles decades before.

Later it got converted again, this time for throwing lines. The barrel is chopped down to 12 inches with a 4 1/2 inch steel cup fixed to the muzzle, and the magazine well is plugged with a block of wood since it only needs to feed one blank at a time. You drop a projectile with a light line tied to it into the cup, touch it off, and send that line across to another ship or over to shore. Once the light line is across, you use it to haul over something heavier.

Rescue work, mooring lines, ship to ship transfer, all of it starts with getting a string over the gap. It is a strange looking thing, but it beat throwing a weighted rope by hand.

Today’s photos come courtesy of Simpson Ltd, who consistently have some of the better set prices out there on old and rare stuff. I worked with them on a book review a while back and they were good people to deal with. Worth a look if you like this kind of thing.

“RFI NO.1 MK 3* Line Throwing Gun.” Simpson Ltd, www.simpsonltd.com/products/C73959. Accessed 28 July 2026.

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