Quote Originally Posted by dulsin View Post
The Martini-Henry rifle was a drop block design single shot design. Single shot rifles do not have feeding jams. At most the soft shell casing will expand against the chamber and not eject leaving you to dig it out with a knife. That is not a problem with the rifle design more a problem of the shells.

This can happen to revolvers also.
Well whatever, it appears there was a problem with the rifles becoming jammed for whatever reason. The commonly held belief that the men had been overrun because of a shortage of ammunition proved to be false.