23-cm Shrapnel Shell in a Wooden Box

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

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-1285

One half of a 23-cm pointed shrapnel shell, cut lengthwise, in a wooden box.

The shell is 65.8 cm long and has a 226 mm calibre. It has studs for a rifled barrel with six grooves. The nose is filled with wood and has a fuse hole, and from there a channel to the powder charge in the bottom of the shell; the shrapnel charge, consisting of lead balls with a 24 mm diameter, is situated between the wooden nose and the powder charge and is separated from the powder charge by an iron ring.

This shell is a Boxer Shrapnel Mk II 9-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 23-cm Armstrong ordnance from 1867 onwards, but, as far as is known, these particular shells were never used in the Netherlands.

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. 75 ff.; J.H. Haakman, Handboek over de zee-artillerie voor konstabels en matrozen-kanonniers, 4 vols., Nieuwediep, 1871-72, vol. 2, pp. 120 ff.; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1285

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'W.G. Armstrong & Co, 23-cm Shrapnel Shell in a 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.245097