Often regarded as The Most Powerful Revolver, The Colt Walker! was a revolutionary step in firearms history… but also a relative failure…

Uberti reproduction of a Colt Walker 1847 – .44 caliber.
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The Colt Walker, is a single-action firearm with a revolving cylinder holding six charges of black powder behind six bullets.
Dessigned in 1846 in a collaboration between Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker (1817–1847) and American firearms inventor Samuel Colt (1814–1862), building upon the earlier Colt Paterson design.

Painting of Samuel Colt, circa 1849-1859
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Walker wanted a handgun that was extremely powerful at close range, and could also knock out horses with a single shot, replacing the Model 1842 Percussion Pistols as the Cavalry’s Sidearms.

US M1842 Dragoon’s pistol – .54 caliber
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It weighs 2 kg unloaded, has a 9-inch barrel, fires a .44 caliber conical and round ball, and holds a powder charge of 60 grains in each chamber, for comparison, The Springfield Model 1812 Flintlock Rifle (The service weapon of the U.S Infantry in 1847.) was a .69 caliber smoothbore musket, with a total length of 145 cm).

Springfield Model 1812 Flintlock Rifle – 69. Caliber
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The initial contract called for 1,000 of the revolvers and accoutrements. Colt commissioned Eli Whitney to fill the contract and produced an extra 100 revolvers for private sales and promotional gifts, notoriously Samuel Walker carried two of his namesake revolvers in the Mexican–American War during his service with the Mounted Rifles. He was killed in battle the same year his famous handgun was invented, 1847, shortly after he had received them. Only 1,100 of these guns were originally made, 1,000 as part of a military contract and an additional 100 for the civilian market, however, only around 500 of them made it back home after the war, since 300 were supposedly broken or lost (although the number may have been inflated by soldiers who lied about their loss to keep the revolvers.) And another 200 were lost at sea on their way back to Paterson, New York.

Captain Samuel Walker, 1846
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The Republic of Texas had been the major purchaser of the early Paterson Holster Pistol (No. 5 model), a five shot .36 Caliber revolver that saw use by the Texas Rangers, alongside the Walker.

Colt Paterson 5th Model – .36 caliber.
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However… the Walker had quite a few problems under it’s sleeve.
In addition to its large size and weight, problems with the Walker included ruptured cylinders when firing. This has been attributed to primitive metallurgy, soldiers allowing powder to spill across the mouths of the chambers, and even loading the original conical bullets backwards into the chambers.
Ultimately, the Walker was phased out, and replaced with the much more succesful Colt Dragoon Revolver, with the first models using spare Walker parts, ending up as the sidearm of the cavalry, and ultimately catapulted Samuel Colt and the revolver to success.

Original Colt Dragoon 1st Model – .44 Cal.