Jerry L. Janzen, Bayonets of the Remington Cartridge Period, states that the US Model 1871 Navy rifle was manufactured by Springfield Armory and a total of 22,013 were produced. However the Navy rejected the first 10,000 because of the rear sight location.  These were sold to Poultney and Trimble, who sold them to France during the Franco-Prussian War.  The remaining 12,000 were delivered to the Navy by June 1871.  Ames Manufacturing Company was contracted to produced the US sword bayonet and the contract was completed on July 13th, 1871. The bayonet was designed to fit under the rifles barrel.  It has a brass hilt, cast with a scaled pattern grip and the Bureau of Naval Ordnance monogram (crossed cannon and anchor) on each side of the pommel.  The back of the grip was raised and cut for the rifle barrel bayonet stud.  The straight blade is 20 inches long with a spear point and a 14 inch fuller in the center of each side.  The initials of G.G.S. that are stamped on the bayonet stands for G.G. Saunders, a civilian inspector for the Navy.

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Albert N. Hardin, The American Bayonet 1776 – 1964, states that blades of this bayonet are known which are finished both bright and browned.

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John Spangler, A quote from a personal conversation.

"Why 12,000 rifles and only 10,000 bayonets?

The first USN order was for 10,000 of the USN Model 1870 rifles which were made by Springfield Armory, hence 10,000 bayonets also ordered, although I do not know the details how they were ordered- USN contract to Ames, or Springfield contract to Ames.  The Navy Bureau of Ordnance procured a lot of stuff, and really had no need to go through the Army Ordnance Department, unless they had some sort of agreement that Army Ordnance would handle all USN small arms needs- and Springfield was already involved with the rifles.

Then, with the French buying everything they could, the Navy conveniently discovered that the rear sight location was a problem, so they could reject the entire lot of 10,000, which were (almost all) immediately sold to France.  In a rare case of fiscal opportunism, the sale price to France was HIGHER than the contract cost.   This allowed the Navy to order replacement rifles "with the sight in the correct location" and they had enough money from sale of the first lot to order 12,000 rifles for the second order.  Since they had NOT sold the 10,000 bayonets, they had those on hand and may have simply decided it was not necessary to order 2,000 more to match the number of rifles.

A few of the original order rifles "with sights in wrong location" had already been issued to deploying ships of the Navy, and remained in USN hands after the rest were sold to France.   At least one of these was included in the lot of 100 .50 caliber M1870 rifles altered under contract by Winchester to .22 rimfire for gallery practice use in 1889.

I have no idea if or how the Navy made up for the small number of deployed rifles to actually deliver 10,000 to France.

But, that is my understanding of how the Navy ended up with 12,000 rifles but only 10,000 bayonets."

Are there really browned blades?