The name Eley Hawk is synonymous with high quality shotgun cartridges. With a history that spans nearly 200 years - the company was founded just ten years after Purdey - there are few brands in shooting that are as recognisable nor as well-respected. The company was founded in 1828 by two brothers, William and Charles Eley, opening their first factory on Bond Street. That this particular London thoroughfare is now associated with luxury fashion and jewellery boutiques is apt, given the family’s roots as silversmiths.
Eley's Bond St premesis
While the shooting world is steeped in tradition, and the equipment that we use today is not all that far removed from those that were used a hundred years ago, the early years of game shooting were, by comparison, hotbeds of innovation and experimentation. Eley’s first product, launched in 1828, was an early precursor to the cartridges we know today. At this time, a self-contained cartridge, containing all the components, was still decades off. Instead, the various components were individually loaded into the gun via the muzzles.
Eley's 1861 pinfire shotgun shells - credit: Wikipedia
The product that Eley launched was intended to improve the shot’s efficacy at range, and consisted of a wire cage, which held the shot, encased in paper. This was inserted into the barrel on top of the powder charge, the wadding being incorporated into the cartridge, resulting in speedier loading. An advertisement for the product claimed that they would make “all guns kill from twenty to forty yards further than a loose charge”, while another described them as keeping the gun “free from lead, and the unpleasant recoil consequent therefrom.” Despite early poor reviews and a bit of tweaking to reduce the risk of the shot balling, the end result was a cartridge described as being “worth their weight in gold”.
A risky business
The patenting of a percussion-based firing system in 1807 eventually led to the invention of the percussion cap, which Eley added to their product list in 1937. Eventually this would open the door to the invention of a self-contained shotgun cartridge. Ironically perhaps, it was in experimenting with a new type of percussion cap that William Eley, one of the founding brothers, accidentally blew himself up at the age of 47, in 1841. A newspaper report from the time read: “On Friday evening, between the hours of six and seven o’clock, a tremendous explosion, similar to a discharge of cannon, was heard to proceed from the extensive manufactory of Messrs. Eley and Company.” The report continued, somewhat gruesomely:
“It was very shortly discovered that Mr. Eley, the proprietor of the manufactory, and who carries on his business in St. James’s, at the corner of Jermyn-street, had perished. On search being made through the dilapidated premises he was discovered stretched on the floor of the counting house, a frightful spectacle. His left arm and hand were blown off, his right thigh was nearly severed, both his feet were blown to pieces, his person in other respects was mutilated and blackened, and scarcely a remnant of his apparel was left about him.”
It will come as no surprise, and some comfort, that innovation today is somewhat safer! “Nowadays, innovation has to comply with CIP regulation for both gun makers and cartridge manufacturers alike,” Martyn Powers, Production Manager at Eley Hawk, told me. “We have to be able to combine our eagerness to develop new products with the required standards, firstly from a safety perspective and then from an ease of use for the shooter. Historically, product development was less regulated and slightly less complicated, standards and regulation did not play such a key role.”
From muzzle-loading to breach-loading
William’s three sons William Thomas, Charles and Henry continued the business after the explosion, with William Thomas in the driving seat. Not only was he a great innovator, patenting, among other things, a combustible paper cartridge and devising an improved way to manufacture percussion caps, but also turning the factory into one of the biggest ammunition producers in the world.
William Thomas Eley
When considering the evolution of shotgun cartridges, it is necessary to keep in mind that it goes hand in hand with the technology of shotguns themselves. The advent of the breech loading shotgun in 1851 eventually paved the way for the way for pre-loaded cartridges, but it was not until a decade later that the centrefire cartridge became popular. Eley’s role in this was significant, if not entirely above board. The company effectively broke the patent on the design, then won the court case brought by the patent-holder, the gunmaker George Daw, on the grounds that the patent had expired.
These early shotgun cartridges had a brass shell, but by 1870 paper cases were increasingly common. But, as anyone who has ever dropped a book in the bath will attest, paper and moisture are not happy bedfellows, meaning that these early paper cartridges had significant drawbacks.
Eley’s continued commitment to innovation saw the company develop a varnishing that would help to protect the contents from damp. This “pergamoid” varnish consisted of five layers of paper, bonded with water-resistant adhesive, and it won the company the Grand Prix Medal at the Paris exhibition in 1898, and then the Grand Prix and Gold Medal in 1900. To commemorate this, in 1903 Eley launched one of the most enduring and recognisable shotgun cartridges – the Eley Grand Prix, their orange cases instantly recognisable in their modern descendants, which now include a steel shot varient with the innovative Pro Eco biodegradable wad system.
1898 'pergamoid'cartridges
Award-winning shotgun cartridge innovation
Writing in the Shooting Times on the history of shotgun cartridges, Diggory Haddoke described Eley Grand Prix as “the benchmark for British shotgun cartridges for the next 80 years.” As you might expect, Eley were not content to rest upon their laurels. In 1933 they pioneered the first plastic shotgun cartridge, though it would be another 44 years before they began selling a plastic version of the Grand Prix.
1903 Eley Grand Prix
The intervening years saw Eley introduce the Kleena wad (1959), a unique fibre wad component that, as the name suggests, cleaned the barrels of the gun when fired, and the company became part of the ICI (Imperial Chemicals Industry) group in 1962. The polymer research at ICI resulted in Eley marketing their first plastic-cased cartridge in 1966. The 1980s saw Eley acquire the Hawk Best Ammunition brand and in 1989 Eley Hawk, the brand we know today, was formed.
The thread that runs through this whole story is one of constant innovation, and is a strand that continues to weave through the company’s more recent history. Eley were the first UK cartridge brand to market a biodegradable wad – the Pro Eco Wad – which is now available in the award winning copper-coated Zeniths, VIP Steel and the modern incarnation of that 1903 Grand Prix, the Grand Prix Traditional Pro Eco Steel.
Looking to the future
Martyn, who has worked for Eley for more than 40 years, and has been a driving force behind many of the company’s recent innovations, has seen it all in his time, but reckons that recent years have been among the most challenging. “The 21st century is proving to be demanding and challenging. We as shooters and manufacturers alike are going to have to adapt to it,” he said, adding “new materials – ethically produced, sourced and biodegradable, with minimal or ideally no environmental impact are just some of the new standards that have been added to the passion for wildlife conservation and our total focus on performance, consistency and safety.”
Martyn Powers in Eley's modern factory
With 193 years of innovation to lean on, Eley Hawk is perfectly positioned to stay at the forefront of cartridge technology as the move away from lead game loads disrupts the shooting world, but whenever there’re big changes, there are big roadblocks to overcome too. “Our current challenges are greatly biased by supply chain issues,” said Martyn, “the current worldwide situation is making us adapt quickly.”
“Having said that, our ambition remains the same, to stay at least one step ahead. Eley is responsible for a vast number of cartridge innovations throughout history – pin fire, paper cases, plastic cases, bismuth shot, Kleena fibre wads and now Pro Eco wads – and has been ahead of its time since the earliest days of the company. We work very hard on a daily basis to ensure this continues being the norm and hope it will continue to be the case for at least the next 200 years.”
Discover more about Eley's range of game and clay cartridges
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