If you know why shrapnel is called shrapnel – read no further.
One of my permissions is not known for it’s ordnance – other than musket balls – so on a recent visit I was full of anticipation when I got a good signal with a high reading. It turned out to be the first piece of shrapnel I had ever found there. Like most of us I had detected my fare share elsewhere and it set me wondering about the origins of the term “shrapnel”.
That wonderful font of knowledge, Google, provided the answer. Shrapnel is named after Major-General Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842) an English artillery officer who designed and developed a cast iron sphere filled with balls and black powder with a crude time fuse. The sphere would explode in front of or over its intended target at a range of 1100 metres. Eventually a conventional shaped artillery shell was developed which had a better range and carried more balls. And from this came the fragmentation shell – the fallout from which we are all familiar with. So I suspect that to be grammatically correct we should write Shrapnel rather than shrapnel – unless we are referring to our collections of five and one pence pieces.
Chairman Joe.
