Fray Bentos

The Real 'Fury' Tank - The Last Stand of 'Fray Bentos'
This video popped up on YouTube. It tells a crazy story about a WW1 tank crew, but it doesn't tell us how the tank got it's name. Fortunately we have Google, who knows everything even if it isn't willing to tell us exactly what we want to know right off the bat. Sometimes we have to dig a little.

Fray Bentos (upper left), Beunos Aires (lower left), & Montevideo (lower right)

Fray Bentos is a town in Uraguay, about 100 miles upstream of Beunos Aires, Argentina.

Fray Bentos 'Classic' Steak and Kidney

Fray Bentos is famous for the meat packing plant that produced tinned (canned) beef. In the 100-odd years they were in business they slaughtered zillions of cattle and produced bazillions of cans of tinned beef that were shipped world-wide.

Fray Bentos Abandoned Meat Packing Plant

This plant is so significant that it has become a world heritage site. The site is not all that impressive, a bunch of old, decaying industrial buildings. I suspect the reason it was made a world heritage site is  because of the impact it had on feeding Europe.

Okay, so we know where the name 'Fray Bentos' comes from, but how did it get applied to the tank?  You may have already figured this out. Because being inside the tank when things were heating up outside, the crew felt like tinned meat.

More:

• The frontispiece for the video comes from Andrea Miniatures.
• Some dude thinks the name Fray Bentos is derived from Friar Benedict.

UPM's Fray Bentos Pulp Mill (foreground) and the 
Libertador General San Martín Bridge to Argentina (background)

The bridge is like 3 miles long but only 2 lanes.

P.S. I always thought 'frontispiece' was spelled 'frontspiece'. Don't think it needs the first i, but that's spelling for you, always sticking in extra letters where they aren't needed.