Hand mortar

[3] The low number of surviving specimens of this firearm indicate that it was not a popular weapon, possibly due to the safety issues.

[6] In 1872, a work titled Life-boats, Projectiles and Other Means for Saving Life gave an account of a sailor using a hand mortar.

[4] Another account refers to a hand mortar as a coehorn, and attributes its invention to a Dutch engineer, Menno Van Coehoorn, who lived from 1641 to 1704.

The first references to the type of grenade used in a hand mortar occur in a 1472 work titled Valturius, where an incendiary prototype may have been produced.

[13] Explosive grenades were made from brass, glass, and possibly clay, and incendiary projectiles were made from canvas, however, Nathanael Nye, Master Gunner of the City of Worcester in a work titled Art of Gunnery published in 1647, remarks that the soldiers of his day were not fond of handling the grenades because they were too dangerous.

An example from the 1590s
Some German hand mortars from the 16th to 18th centuries