Ketchum Hand Grenade (Civil War)

Hand grenades have been around for a while – here is one from the American Civil War -http://www.civilwar.si.edu/weapons_grenades.html

Apparently this design was not very effective – in a Civil War book I’m editing, the boys in blue under siege in Knoxville found something that was – taking much larger artillery shells, cutting the fuzes down to a short increment, lighting them, and tossing them over earthworks onto the heads of attacking Confederates -nasty business for the boys in gray caught in a deep ditch, trapped in a web of telegraph wires strung between tree stumps, with minie balls and improvised grenades landing in their midst.