Object data
iron, brass, lead and wood
shell: height 22.5 cm × width 51.5 cm × depth 22.5 cm
Royal Laboratory
23-cm Palliser Shell in a Wooden Box
Woolwich, c. 1870
Inscriptions
- inscription, on the lock of the box: [PAL]LISER / [12 IN]CH SHELL John Shaw & Sons / Wolverhampton / Safety patent lever lock.
Provenance
...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883
Object number: NG-MC-1287
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
One half of a pointed 23-cm shell, painted red, in a wooden box.
The box is damaged. The shell is 51.5 cm long and has a 225 mm calibre. It is irregularly cut lengthwise, but the nose is still intact. The shell has holes for studs, which are not present, for a rifled barrel with six grooves and is hollow; in the bottom it has a section made of a softer metal with a filling hole. Below the nose it has two shallow indentations for the ammunition crane. Two holes have been drilled into the side, which were used to burst the shell in half.
This shell is a Palliser shell MK IV 9-inch RML, which was produced from March 1870 onwards. Palliser shells were hardened by a chilling process (so-called ‘chilled projectiles’), which is why the nose is not broken and why a section of a softer metal is made in the bottom, which otherwise would be too hard to make the filling hole. They were for muzzle-loading rifled ordnance. The Dutch Navy used 23-cm Armstrong ordnance from 1867 onwards.
Literature
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. 79 ff., p. 96; J.H. Haakman, Handboek over de zee-artillerie voor konstabels en matrozen-kanonniers, 4 vols., Nieuwediep, 1871-72, vol. 2, pp. 116-18, vol. 3, pp. 125, 130; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1287; Atlas Artillerie Materieel Koninklijke Nederlandsche Marine, Amsterdam 1891, pl. XIX, figs. 5-6
Citation
J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Royal Laboratory, 23-cm Palliser Shell in a Wooden Box, Woolwich, c. 1870', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.245099
(accessed 25 April 2024 01:12:49).