2-979-772 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mallet's Three-Foot Mortar, 1857. British shell-firing mortar built for the Crimean War, but never used in combat. 'Mr. Mallet's object in designing these enormous mortars is to enable a shell of a yard in diameter, weighing about a ton and a quarter, and holding nearly 500 pounds weight of powder, to be thrown [4700 yards horizontally]...the explosion of so large a mass of powder in the buried shell is capable of excavating a [huge] crater...and levelling buildings and works for a radius forty times greater than that of a 13-inch shell...these mortars... are readily capable of being separated into several distinct segments or parts...[and] can be easily put together in the battery...[Mortars were made at] the Thames Ironworks (late C. J. Mare's), Blackwall...during the Russian war, but their completion delayed, through Mr. Mare's bankruptcy, until after the arrival of peace'. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.