An iron hand grenade ca 1700

[M ELEY]

One of my latest purchases from a while back, said to have come from the Latvian border and retrieved from a swampy area. The Great Northern War ravaged this area in the early 18th century.

This grenade is a whopper, measuring approximately 4" in diameter. At first, I thought 'she' was a mortar shell, but then I began to do some research. I have a much smaller grenade, just about 2" in diameter and I wondered how could there be such a difference in sizes in these. It turns out that there were. Typically, the 'army' models of grenade were indeed small, measuring between 2 to 3" in diameter. Naval examples, on the other hand, were much larger. In Gilkerson's "Borders Away II", on page 38 and 161, we see an example brought up from the wreck of the HMS Invincible (which it obviously wasn't!) dating to 1757. These grenades were found intact with the original fuse and cap and measured 5 1/2" in diameter! I have likewise seen similar naval examples in the 3" to 6" diameter range.