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1930's Asiatic Fleet bullet & coin trench art


Bob Hudson
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Wish someone had written their name on this. We don't know who they were, but we know where they went because it's engraved around the edge of the ashtray: the Chinese ports of Che Foo, Amoy, Tsingtao and Hong Kong, and - when the Asiatic Fleet headed south for the winter - Manila.

 

One of the two coins is dated 1932. One of the bullet slugs is missing: it likely had a coin attached to it.

 

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The bullet casings look like they are silver and the slugs look like they were copper-plated. The casing with the missing slug has a screw head inside it. That's oneof three screws that hold the bullet ring to the base.

 

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someone put a lot of work into that.....

 

Must have been a machinist mate :) The inner ring has depressions the bullet castings fit into. As I said the casings look like silver: it could be silver-plating over brass, although I would expect to see some green corrosion from the brass. The bottom even looks silver-plated.

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I've been trying to find similar pieces and did find a couple with the ring of bullets. This one is really elaborate with the float plane:

 

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This has the same basic form and is named to a Navy ship that was in China occupation service after WWII.

 

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And this showed up on ebay when I searched for bullet ashtray - 1940's glass with a strikingly similar form:

 

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