Another question about the Bastin action...and probably only Raimey or Steve Nash will be able to help. Were the guns built in London using this action...Durs Egg, Purdey, Reilly, etc....using imported complete actions from Liege or did they make them under license themselves?
I found the blurb from Stephen Nash on the internet...but nothing definitive:
"The Bastin breech-loader did have some popularity in Britain, at least in the London shooting scene. There was a Bastin-action 14-bore by Auguste Francotte of Liège in the 1859 Field trial, the only non-British gun in that year’s competition, indicating that such guns were available at the time. The Bastin sliding breech-loader was very clever in its design, and it was described and illustrated in John Henry Walsh’s 1859 book The Shot-Gun and Sporting Rifle and in William Wellington Greener’s 1871 book Modern Breechloaders: Sporting and Military and his 1881 book The Gun and its Development."
Rigby's review of the systems exhibited at the 1862 Fair (posted by Mr. Nash of course on the Reilly line)..only mentions Bastin in passing but in doing so, makes it appear that the action was made in both UK and Belgium:
"We notice one, a sliding action by Hubar (334), which appears more solid than the ordinary sliding actions known as Bastin’s and Gaye’s [Ghaye], specimens of which are to be found in both the English and Belgian departments."
