The Black Prince’s 28-bore hammer gun to be auctioned in UK

London: The unique 28-bore single barrel lightweight hammer gun by J Purdey & Sons, manufactured for Prince Duleep Singh, is set to be auctioned. The bid starts from £1100 on 3 December 2020.

The makers have confirmed that the gun was completed as one of a pair of guns for Prince Duleep Singh. The gun appears to have been purchased for the prince when he was 15 years old, and as such may well have been one of his earliest guns. The 28 bores single barrel weighs 3lb and is 13in. stock with 14¼in. barrel. It is approximately ½ choke and has 2¾inches chamber.

There was a prince who's identity made a Royal sign to the whole world. Prince Duleep Singh was born on September 6, 1838, in Lahore, the capital of Sikh Empire to Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his wife, Jinda Kaur.

Ranjit Singh had led Punjab with an iron hand, and it was he who assembled different Misls (groups of Sikhs led by other clans) under the flag of Khalsa. He extended his empire from Satluj in the South, till Kashmir (its boundaries even touched Tibet) in the north, and till Peshawar in the west.

In March 1853, Duleep Singh quietly baptised a Christian at a separate ceremony at Fatehgarh. In 1854 he sailed to England far apart from his mother who was exiled in Kathmandu, Nepal. Duleep Singh was an immediate success with Queen Victoria. She commissioned the most immeasurable portrait painter of the day, Franz Xavier Winterhalter, to paint Duleep Singh during one of his numerous stays at Buckingham Palace.

While Duleep Singh was living a noble life like a British royal, he had also wedded a Bamba Muller, a part Ethiopian, part German, Arabic speaking girl from a Cairo mission school. The couple had six kids. The Maharajah visited India several times in the 1860s and 1870s but never allowed to visit his homeland Punjab for fear of rebellion.

During his initial years and his twenties, the Maharajah lived in Scotland, in the area of Perthshire. He was recognised as "The Black Prince of Perthshire" among the locals. Queen Victoria, who was then the British monarch, took a liking for him. She fondly called him "my black prince". Records show he became an exotic presence at royal parties, even holidayed with the sovereign and her consort Prince Albert.

Maharaja looked his last breath in 1893 in Paris, and amid the reports that his body might be brought to India for cremation according to the Sikh customs, he was buried in his estate in Elveden.