68lb Shperical Shell

Here we have one of the final, and at 8” diameter – arguable on the largest sizes of spherical ammunition utilised by the British Navy, prior to the introduction of elongated shell firing guns. The 68pdr smooth bore gun started life as a coast defence piece, starting its operational life in 1842, with over 2000 pieces cast up until 1861. The decision to upsize the legacy 32 & 42lb guns was made on account of the need for greater penetration and range – a topic that became of great importance following the launch of the first French Iron vessel – La Gloire. With iron plate armour rendering all previous naval ordnance all but obsolete, the British Navy turned to the designs of William Armstrong, and chose to adopt his new breech loading design of gun. The weakness of this design soon became apparent, particular with the larger 110lb models – whereby the breech vent block suffered fatigue following multiple firings, leading to horrendous breech failures. The solution to these problems was to reduce the maximum service charge for these guns, with the unfortunate knock-on effect that they could no longer pierce the plate armour of the new iron clad vessels. During these times of great distrust and tensions with France, the board of ordnance took the decision to revert back to arming its new warrior class iron clads with the 68pdr smooth bore gun, which was both simpler to understand for the common gunner, and retained the ability to penetrate plate armour.
 
HMS Warrior was the first vessel to be built around an Iron girder frame, as opposed to the traditional timber backbone of vessels that came before. It was only at this point that a vessel’s floors were strong enough to accommodate the massively heavy 5.9 ton 68pdr guns.
 
This spherical ammunition was known as “Shell” – on account of its hollow nature. From the 1830’s onwards, naval ammunition began to focus more and more on the anti-personnel benefits of breeching a vessels walls, followed by an explosion of a bursting charge – which would send large fragments of the iron ball careering down the length of the gun decks – causing as much devastation as possible. These projectiles were black powder charged, and fitted with ‘Boxer’ type timed fuses, which were pierced at a certain time denotion – to facilitate bursting charge ignition to a given range. The fuse was ignited by the muzzle flash of the fired gun, with a wooden sabot used to index the fuse towards the muzzle of the gun upon loading – to avoid premature ignition of the shell when fired. 
 
This shell was recovered from a Victorian Naval gunnery range, which was used to trial the 68pdr gun prior to its adoption aboard HMS warrior and subsequent vessels. This size of spherical shell is very hard to come by, and are very much the centre piece of any transitional ordnance collection. The shell is free from explosive (FFE). Over 18’s to purchase only.