18-cm Shell in Wooden Box

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-1282

One half of a pointed 18-cm shell, cut lengthwise, in a wooden box.

The shell is 51.5 cm long and has a 176 mm calibre. The shell has studs for a rifled barrel with three grooves and is hollow for the powder charge; in the nose it has a hole for the fuse. It has shallow indentations in the top for the ammunition crane.

This shell is a Common shell MK V 7-inch RML, which W.G. Armstrong & Co of Newcastle started producing in 1868. It was used for muzzle-loading rifled ordnance. The Dutch Navy used 18-cm Armstrong ordnance from 1869 onwards.

C. Orde Brown, Ammunition: A Descriptive Treatise on the Different Projectiles, Charges, Fuzes, Rockets etc. at Present in Use for Land and Sea Service and on Other War Stores Manufactured in the Royal Laboratory, 2 vols., London (1870), vol. 2, pp. 66, 71; J.H. Haakman, Handboek over de zee-artillerie voor konstabels en matrozen-kanonniers, 4 vols., Nieuwediep, 1871-72, vol. 1, p. 130, vol. 2, pp. 116 ff.; Treatise on Ammunition, London 1874, p. 332; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1282; Atlas Artillerie Materieel Koninklijke Nederlandsche Marine, Amsterdam 1891, pl. XIX, figs. 30-31

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'W.G. Armstrong & Co, 18-cm Shell in Wooden Box, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1868', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.245094