[6] It was highly prized by hunters and explorers for close range defense against big game such as tigers or cape buffalo.

[9] Its ammunition had greater stopping power than the contemporary Beaumont–Adams and Colt Navy revolvers, making it ideal for colonial warfare.

When facing charging tribesmen like the Zulus or Ansar (the so-called Sudanese Dervishes), more modern ammunition tended to go straight through the enemy who would keep going.

[4] One famous user was the photographer and film maker[10] Lieutenant Colonel John M. B. Stanford,[11] who killed a fanatical assegai-wielding Sudanese Ansar with a Lancaster pistol while working as a war correspondent at the Battle of Omdurman.

A double-barreled Lancaster howdah pistol with a unique spring-loaded blade is the weapon of the big-game hunter Remington in The Ghost and the Darkness.