Lanchester in the Littoral

A Royal Navy patrol from the Battle-class fleet destroyer HMS Barrosa (D68), aboard a perau, on a coastal patrol in Brunei during the defense of that country from neighboring Indonesia. Official caption: “Navy patrols hunt arms smugglers in Borneo. April 1964, off the coast of Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah. To assist the Royal Navy’s constant search for arms and ammunition smuggling, the sultan of Brunei provided specially built peraus, small craft that are particularly maneuverable in the narrow channels between mango swamps.” IWM (A 34819) The rating in the foreground is armed with a Lanchester “machine carbine,” that curious unlicenced British knockoff of the German C.G. Haenel MP28/II submachine gun. That design, attributed to the famous Hugo Schmeisser, was itself an improvement of the Great War-era Bergmann Maschinenpistole 18, a 9mm blowback-action open bolt burp gun that weighed a hefty 11 pounds, sans ammo. Lanchester Machine Carbine 9mm MK 1 via Royal Armouries, is basically an…