Abstract
ON March 13, 1842, Lieut.-General Henry Shrapnell, the distinguished artillerist and inventor, died at his home, Peartree House, Southampton, at the age of eighty, having spent his whole career in the improvement of guns and projectiles. Born at Bradford-on-Avon on June 3, 1761, he entered the Royal Artillery at the age of eighteen and continued to serve until 1825, when he was retired with the rank of major-general. In 1837 he was promoted lieutenant-general. Fused hollow shells had been used since the time of Vauban, but Shrapnell was the first to introduce shells filled with musket bullets and with a bursting charge for firing from long guns. His first demonstration was made at Gibraltar in 1788, but it was not until 1803 that Shrapnell shells were adopted by the Board of Ordnance. In that year Shrapnell carried out a large number of firing experiments at the works of the Carron Company, Falkirk, and the company was given orders for large numbers of this new projectile. Shrapnell shells were used at the Siege of Surinam in 1803, in the Peninsular War and at the Battle of Waterloo. The inventor spent many thousands of pounds of his own money on the experiments ; he was given a pension of £1,200 in 1814. At his death Shrapnell was buried in the family vault in the parish church of Bradford-on-Avon, where a tablet erroneously gives the year of his death as 1847.
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Centenary of General Shrapnell. Nature 149, 298 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149298c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149298c0