Ketchum Grenade

The grenade was a three-piece weapon, consisting of the plunger (or nostril), casing (body or orange shell, containing main charge), and tailpiece.

One of the most famous accounts of Ketchum grenades use occurred during the Union assault near the Confederate works referred to as the "Priest Cap" in Port Hudson, Louisiana.

The defending Confederates figured out that if the plunger didn't strike at the correct angle the grenade would fall harmlessly onto the ground.

Lt. Howard C. Wright described the scene from the Confederate side of the assault: "The enemy had come this time prepared with hand grenades to throw into our works from the outside.

When these novel missiles commenced falling among the Arkansas troops they did not know what to make of them, and the first few which they caught not having burst, they threw them back upon the enemy in the ditch.

Always equal to any emergency, they quickly devised a scheme…Spreading blankets behind the parapet, the grenades fell harmlessly into them, whereupon our boys would pick them up and hurling them with much greater force down the moat they would almost invariably explode."

The 91st New York, Colonel Van Zandt commanding--each soldier carrying a five-pound hand-grenade, with his musket thrown over his shoulder--followed next in order.

In the meantime, while the skirmishers were nobly endeavouring to sustain themselves in their position, Weitzel's column moved up as rapidly as possible, and made a series of desperate assaults on the enemy's works, for which, for bravery and daring, the history of war can hardly furnish a parallel… According to Tom Dickey the first time he went to this site on the Port Hudson battlefield, using a metal detector, he recovered thirty-seven Ketchum grenades.