Standing Well Back
1580-1590

Alchemy and High Explosives

Alchemy is the pursuit of chemical and occult methods to turn base metals into gold, and was an activity pursued with vigour in the 1500s and beyond, into the 1800s even.  As proto-chemists evolved so the boundary between “occult magic” and “chemistry” started to emerge.  At this time the first ever “high explosive” and  indeed the first primary explosive was developed, what we call today fulminating gold or gold fulminate. The German alchemist Sebald Schwaertzer first mentions fulminating gold in literature in his “Chrysopoeia Schwaertzeriana” in 1585.   Other texts add more detail in the early 1600s.

 

For those readers not familiar with explosives, gunpowder is a low explosive, where the explosion propagates through the explosive material, in effect, by heat and flame. In high explosive the chemical reaction occurring is propagated by a shock wave, and fulminate of gold was the first chemical compound isolated which exploded in this manner.  Fulminate of gold is also the first inherent explosive compound (gunpowder being a mixture of fuel and oxidizer). As it is ‘sensitive” it is also the first primary explosive.

Gold is one of the most stable elements – it doesn’t react with very much and by implication a compound of gold is easy to turn back into elemental gold, meaning the compounds are unstable.

For obvious reasons alchemists experimented with gold compounds. They mixed gold with other materials and sometimes accidentally produced compounds that surprised them. It’s tricky to make sense of the archaic descriptions, and the peculiar mixture of occult spells (barking mad) and real chemistry.

Fulminate of gold is created by dissolving gold in “aqua regia”, a three to one mix of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid.  This creates gold hydroxide. When this is mixed with ammonia, gold fulminate is precipitated.  But there are other recipes, which as someone who has a slightly limited expertise in chemistry I simply don’t follow. Real chemists feel free to correct me!   This sensitive explosive is then dried, and can be exploded by heating, crushing or scratching.  This must have been a remarkable thing when first experienced by alchemists who expected the weird and the wonderful.  The chemistry is quite complex and there are a number of related compounds, including (ClAuNH2)2NH and (OHAuNH2)2NH.  Essentially though, fulminate of gold is a mixture of various compounds of ammonia and gold, each of them technically a high explosive.

Fuliminate as a term simply means “exploding” . So gold fulminate can be a mix of a number of complex gold compounds including gold hydrazide.

A number of alchemists and later chemists were injured as a result of experiments with fulminate of gold.  Even in recent years, the research into exotic gold based catalysts has occasionally caused accidents in modern laboratories where gold fulminate was created.

Here’s the diarist Samuel Pepys describing a conversation on the subject in 1663:

Up and to my office all the morning, and at noon to the Coffee- house, where with Dr. Allen some good discourse about physique and chymistry. And among other things, I telling him what Dribble the German Doctor do offer of an instrument to sink ships; he tells me that which is more strange, that something made of gold, which they call in chymistry Aurum fulminans, a grain, I think he said, of it put into a silver spoon and fired, will give a blow like a musquett, and strike a hole through the spoon downward, without the least force upward; and this he can make a cheaper experiment of, he says, with iron prepared.

Note that “Dribble” is the inventor Cornelius Drebble, who invented the submarine and coincidentally mercury fulminate. Drebbel had died about 30 years prior to this Pepys reference. Some sources suggest that Drebble was using fulminate of gold as a detonator in IEDs (“petards”) he made for the British at the siege of La Rochelle in 1628. Drebbel was thus perhaps the first man to use high explosives in munitions. Drebble’s father-in-law was an alchemist who lost the sight in one eye from an alchemical explosion. (Pepys had other discussions with Drebbel’s son in law, Johannes Kuffler who was trying to sell an explosive device to sink ships – more on that in a future post.)

The gas produced when fulminate of gold explodes is largely nitrogen. Accompanying the gas is a characteristic violet/purple plume of gold aerosols.

1580-1590

The mystery of Ralph Rabbards and strange historical munitions

While researching some historical stuff for another post I came across a letter from an alchemist, chemist and inventor called Ralph Rabbards writing to Queen Elisabeth I some time in the latter half of the 1500s.   In the letter Rabbards offers the Queen a series of military inventions, many of them associated with explosives.  Some of these may be bluff on the part of Rabbards, but some will raise your eyebrows, I guarantee. Stick with the archaic language and plough through it, it’s worth it.  These are some extracts from the letter listing the inventions he is offering. My comments in bold

Speciall Observations concerninge the preparations for fireworks

An excellente kinde of salt-peter of great force

Saltepeter  might be so refined that the powder made thereof mighte be of double the force, so that one pounde maye serve as manye shotte, and as stronge as two pounde of that is comonly used, and lesse chardge in cariage and many other wayes apter and better for service

 (Improved gunpowder)

 A strange kinde of flyinge fire many wayes serviceable

A flyinge fire which shall , without ordynance, and farre of, wonderfully annoye any battayle, towne, or campe, and disperse even as if it did rayne fire; and the devydinge fires, being coted and made flyinge, may touch many places, and leave them all burninge; very terrible both to men and horse.

 (Napalm?)

Balls of mettle serving to many purposes

Balls of mettle to throwe into shippes, to enter in campes in the nightes, likewise in streights or breaches, especially in battayles; and to have said balls of all heightes diamiters and quantities, of a righte composition to devide in as many partes, and of such thickness as it should; and to delyver a thousand at once amongst the enemyes with small charge of ordynance, or other instrumentes, and to powre as much fire as your Majestie will upon any place.

(Carrier shells? Cluster munitions?)

A shotte to fire in passinge

A shotte for greate ordnance to pierce deeper then any other shotte, and sett on fire whatsoever it strike throughe or sticketh in.  A moste noble ingen, specialy for sea service.

(Armour piercing incendiary rounds)

A firy chariott to be forc’d by engine of great service

A firy chariot without horses to runne upon the battaile and and disorder it, that no man shal be able to abide or come nighe the same, and wil be directed even as men will to tourne, to staye, or come directly backe upon any presente danger, or elles to followe and chase the enemye in theor flighte.

(An Armed ROV?)

A rare invention

A musket of calyver, with dyvers strange and forcible shotte, which no armor will holde out, at three quarters of a mile or more; and will also become a most forcible weapon in the hande, as good as a pollox, and with a teice, become a perfitt shotte again.

(An anti- armour sniper rifle with a hand to hand capability?)

There’s a manuscript with diagrams by Rabbards of his military inventions in a collection at Yale University – I can’t wait to find a way to see that.

Ship-Borne IEDs

Big IEDs in Ships

As promised, a quick “connections’ commentary on some pretty remarkable IEDs on ships and boats in history.

“Fireships” in terms of boats and ships loaded with incendiary material go back in history – I have found reference to them as far back as 413 BC.  With the invention of gunpowder, fireships occasionally contained gunpowder. Sometimes in massive quantities.  In an earlier blog here, I wrote about the “hellburners”,  two explosively laden fireships used by the Dutch defenders of Antwerp in 1584 against the invading Spanish – one of these the “Hoop” (Hope) detonated against a temporary Spanish bridge, killing 800 – 1000 soldiers. If this is true, it is still probably the most lethal single IED in history. I have now found a diagram purporting to the the clockwork timing mechanisms of the device manufacturer by Bory. The Hellburner itself was designed by the Italian Giambelli, who possibly at the time (and certainly later) was an agent of the British.

References I have found recently suggest that Giambelli mounted a series of earlier attacks , floating explosive objects down the tidal river, with limited success. These IEDs were generally floating objects and rafts which carried barrels of gunpowder on a burning fuse.

After these earlier attacks failed Giambelli “thought big” and amidst a fleet of regular fire vessels sailed two explosive vessels (the “Hoop” and the “Fortune”) down the tide towards the target bridge. My earlier post has more details.  The “Fortune” had a burning fuse (which I have also fund an description of, but it is too complex to post details here).

The Hellburner incident and the use of explosive ships (described by the Italians as “Maschina Infernale”, and by the British as “Machine Vessels” became well known among the navies of Europe for several hundred years.

Just over a hundred years later in 1693 the British Navy led by Admiral Benbow used a ship, imaginatively named the Vesuvius, laden with 300 tons of explosives, (other sources say 20,000 pounds of gunpowder) during an attack on the French port of St Malo. The vessel was sailed in by a Captain Philips. The ship did not quite reach its target, became stuck on a rock and exploded “blowing the roofs of half the town”. But causing little loss of life.  The capstan of the “machine vessel” was thrown several hundred yards and landed on an Inn destroying it.


Machine ship “Vesuvius”, 1693

The following year in a raid on Dieppe, again led by Benbow a machine vessel was sent in to the port to destroy it. The ship, skippered by a Capt Dunbar was placed again the quay – and the crew and Capt Dunbar left it quickly. Unfortunately the fuze went out – but Dunbar re-boarded the vessel, re–lit the fuze, and evacuated a second time.


The Dieppe Raid, 1694

Similar machine vessel attacks were mounted on Dunkirk in the same year.

(Note: There were a number of vessels developed in parallel at the time , known as “bomb vessels” but these should not be confused with machine vessels. Bomb vessels were essentially ships built to mount and fire mortars.  To confuse matters the Vesuvius was a bomb vessel converted to a machine vessel)

A little over 100 years later in 1809 Captain (later Admiral ) Cochrane used an explosively laden ship in the Battle of the Basque Roads on the Biscay Atlantic coast of France.  Cochrane used two explosive ships and twenty-one fire ships to attack the French fleet moored off Ile d’Aix.  Here’s Captain Cochrane’s description (who personally set the fuses on one explosion vessel himself)

 “To our consternation, the fuses, which had been constructed to burn fifteen minutes, lasted little more than half that time, when the vessel blew up, filling the air with shells, grenades, and rockets; whilst the downward and lateral force of the explosion raised a solitary mountain of water, from the breaking of which in all directions our little boat narrowly escaped being swamped. The explosion-vessel did her work well, the effect constituting one of the grandest artificial spectacles imaginable. For a moment, the sky was red with the lurid glare arising from the simultaneous ignition of fifteen hundred barrels of powder. On this gigantic flash subsiding, the air seemed alive with shells, grenades, rockets, and masses of timber, the wreck of the shattered vessel. The sea was convulsed as by an earthquake, rising, as has been said, in a huge wave, on whose crest our boat was lifted like a cork, and as suddenly dropped into a vast trough, out of which as it closed upon us with the rush of a whirlpool, none expected to emerge. In a few minutes nothing but a heavy rolling sea had to be encountered, all having again become silence and darkness.”

Cochrane went on , in 1812, to design even bigger machine vessels, but never got the political support needed to build or employ them. His 1812 designs used a hulk, rather than a rigged vessel.

“The decks would be removed, and an inner shell would be constructed of heavy timbers and braced strongly to the hull. In the bottom of the shell would be laid a layer of clay, into which obsolete ordnance and metal scrap were embedded. The “charge,” in the form of a thick layer of powder, would next be placed, and above that would be laid rows and rows of shells and animal carcasses.   The explosion ship would then be towed into place at an appropriate distance from anchored enemy ships, heeled to a correct angle by means of an adjustment in the ballast loaded in the spaces running along each side of the hulk between the inner and outer hulls, and anchored securely. When detonated, the immense mortar would blast its lethal load in a lofty arc, causing it to spread out over a wide area and to fall on the enemy in a deadly torrent. Experiments conducted with models in the Mediterranean, during his layoff, convinced Cochrane that three explosion ships, properly handled, could saturate a half-mile-square area with 6,000 missiles–enough destructive force to cripple any French squadron even if it lay within an enclosed anchorage.”

In 1864, during the American Civil war an explosively laden ship, the USS Louisiana was used to attack a Confederate fort, Fort Fisher, guarding Wilmington, North Carolina.  The ship was meant to be run aground adjacent to the fort walls and then detonated.  The ship was carrying “215 tons of explosives”. The attack failed as the Louisiana detonated too far away from the fort walls to cause damage.

Here’s a diagam of the ship. Note the huge amount of explosives. I have obtained a detailed description of the numerous initiation systems and fuzes but it is too complex to post here easily.  Suffice to say there were 5 independent firing systems.


USS Louisiana, 1864

Just over a fifty years later the Zeebrugge raid of 1918 saw the British Royal Navy again use an explosive vessel, this time the submarine C-3, under Lt Cdr Sandford. Sandford was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross.

“This officer was in command of submarine C3, and most skillfully placed that vessel in between the piles of the viaduct before lighting his fuse and abandoning her. He eagerly undertook this hazardous enterprise, although well aware (as were all his crew) that if the means of rescue failed and he or any of his crew were in the water at the moment of the explosion, they would be killed outright by the force of such explosion. Yet Lieutenant Sandford disdained to use the gyro steering which would have enabled him and his crew to abandon the submarine at a safe distance, and preferred to make sure, as far as was humanly possible, of the accomplishment of his duty.” After pushing the submarine under the piles of the viaduct and setting the fuse, he and his companions** found that the propeller of their launch was broken, and they had to resort to oars and to row desperately hard against the strong current to get a hundred yards away before the charge exploded. They had a wonderful escape from being killed by the falling debris.


Damage caused by the detonation of the C-3 – Zeebrugge 1918

The final one from this series is Operation Chariot, aka “the Greatest Raid”, the British Navy and commando raid on St Nazaire in 1942.  I won’t repeat the story, other than provide this link to the Wikipedia article – not many Wikipedia articles make the hairs of my neck stand up, but this one does. In this raid, HMS Cambeltown was converted into a massive IED and rammed into the docks in St Nazaire to prevent their use by the German Battleship Tirpitz.


HMS Campbeltown rammed onto the dock gates in St Nazaire, before she exploded. 1942.

One big concept – massive IEDs in ships, woven through history.

I have much more to post on historical naval IEDs. Be patient!

1580-1590

Complex IED attack circa 1584

At readers’ request, another example of an IED attack from the 1500s. I showed this to then Col Joe Votel when he set up the IED TF (the predecessor to JIEDDO) a few years ago.  This image below shows a complex IED attack from the early 1580s, I believe from the Spanish war against the Dutch rebels. Here we have a foreign Army  (the Spaniards) invading a country and the locals (with a different religion) objecting. The locals (the Dutch) have secret help from a neighbouring country (England) with similar religious beliefs who also regard the Spaniards as enemies, but don’t yet want to engage directly, so they provided explosive expertise to the local rebels.  (Get my drift?)

The image is clearer in its original form but this is the best I can do on this blog page. This is a complex IED attack of three command initiated IEDs against a military convoy.  The attacks is well planned and carefully constructed with IEDs functioning at the front of the convoy  (upper right), rear (upper left) and centre.  Note that the firing point for all three is across the river preventing the convoy’s soldiers from counterattacking. The enemy convoy are marching on foot from left to right.

From reading the WIT report on CIDNE (!) I can see that each IED consisted of a barrel of gunpowder buried under the road. In each barrel is embedded a wheel-lock mechanism, triggered by the terrorist across the river pulling a string.  You can see the string in the image if you look carefully.

The effect of the explosions is interesting, if you look carefully. There is a large explosion in each case and rocks and soldiers are thrown in the air and the river, with smoke billowing from each location.  Only two of the “terrorists” at the firing points are pictured, one on the left hand edge half way up, the other on the bottom right corner. (the third is out of the picture to the right). Each firing point is concealed in bushes with a good view of the road, and safe from counter-attack.

There are then cannons set up to subsequently engage the survivors, four in total.  So a good example of a complex attack on a convoy/foot patrol.  Despite the primitive technology I venture to suggest not much has changed and indeed the technology in theaters at the moment isn’t all that much further forward.

Comments welcome.

Ship-Borne IEDs

Hellburner Hoop

Readers of the blog will know I’m researching 16th century IEDs. This one is worth a blog.

The development of explosive devices required a number of technological developments. In the 14th and 15th century the manufacture of saltpeter (Potassium nitrate) became industrialized allowing the production of volumes of blackpowder.  (I’m simplifying things here for the short space appropriate in a blog).  Then with the invention of the Wheelock for firearms in the early part of the 16th century, this allowed for command initiation, by pull by using the initiation system for a gun in an explosive charge. There are a few red herrings around with regard to the use of Iron Pyrites and flint, which in a flintlock in the early 1600s became the favored option once stronger steel was made that wouldn’t be eroded by the flint – pyrites being the spark provider when earlier, softer steel was used in firearms. But of course in an explosive device the “lock” is only going to be used once, so I suspect flint initiation in a Wheelock mechanism, was the first use in IEDs in the 1500s.

The other engineering development in the 16th century that is pertinent is the clock.  Clocks became more widespread, as a cultural phenomenon and as technology permitted smaller clocks (I’m simplifying a chapter of my book here, into two sentences).  The first clock-initiated IEDs occurred in the 16th century. I can’t tell you exactly when the first one was, but I provide below the details of the incident that is the earliest incident where I can find details of such a device.  It is significant too, because I think it may be the IED that caused the greatest number of fatalities, ever, with possibly as many as 1000 killed. Possibly, too, the biggest ever IED. Possibly, too, the first ever WMD.  It also has a significant impact on a whole war in terms of the terror it gave, I believe too on the eventual defeat of The Spanish Armada, some years later, when they scattered before the British fleet, at least partly in fear of a similar device.

In 1584 the city of Antwerp was under siege and blockaded by the Spanish Army following a rebellion. An Italian Engineer, in the secret pay of the English, was supporting the Dutch rebels. In order to destroy a huge pontoon bridge the Spanish had constructed, he was given two Seventy ton ships, the Fortuyn and the Hoop. (“Fortune” and Hope”).

The concept of fire ships was already known and had been used already by the Dutch. But Giambelli, the Italian had bigger ideas. He constructed two massive IEDs, one in each ship. And when I say massive, I mean massive.  He was helped by two key individuals, Bory, a clock maker from Antwerp and Timmerman, a “mechanic”. Here’s a description of how each was made from a source document I found recently:

In the hold of each vessel, along the whole length, was laid down a solid flooring of brick and mortar, one foot thick and five feet wide.  Upon this was built a chamber of marble mason-work, forty feet long, three and a half feet broad, as many high, and with side-walks five feet in thickness. This was the crater.  It was filled with seven thousand pounds of gunpowder, of a kind superior to anything known, and prepared  by Giambelli himself. It was covered with a roof, six feet in thickness, formed of blue tombstones, placed edgewise. (Note: some sources say also this was sealed with lead)  Over this crater, rose a hollow cone, or pyramid, made of heavy marble slabs, and filled with mill-stones, cannon balls, blocks of marble, chain-shot, iron hooks, plough-coulters, and every dangerous missile that could be imagined.  The spaces between the mine and the sides of each ship were likewise filled with paving stones, iron-bound stakes, harpoons, and other projectiles.  The whole fabric was then covered by a smooth light flooring of planks and brick-work, upon which was a pile of wood: This was to be lighted at the proper time, in order that the two vessels might present the appearance of simple fire-ships, intended only to excite a conflagration of the bridge.

The initiation system for the Fortuyn was a slow burning fuse, while the Hoop, courtesy of Mr Bory the clockmaker, was initiated with an adapted clock. I’m guessing the striker of the clock was a modification of a firearm lock, wheel-lock or flintlock. One source suggests that the time delay was one hour. These ships were sent down the waterway with skeleton crews, along with 32 “normal” fireships, with the crews as usual setting them alight before getting away in small boats, allowing the currents, tides and winds to carry them towards the pontoon bridge.

The Fortuyn failed to be carried towards the best target and then when the charge exploded, it only partially functioned, causing no damage and no injuries. The entire Spanish Army, called to the alert on the approach of the fire ships, to fend them off and extinguish the fires, was heard jeering.  But the Hoop bore down on its target and became entangled with Spanish ships and the bridge itself. As soldiers boarded her to extinguish the fire on her deck, the clock ticked, … then struck.  7,000 pounds of blackpowder, reputedly the best Antwerp possessed, exploded and the pontoon bridge, many ships and hundreds of soldiers disappeared. Some sources say 800 Spanish soldiers were killed at that instant, others put the figure at 1000. Many remarkable tales exist about oddities of the explosive effect. (Detail will follow in the book!) Two of the Spanish generals bodies were found some time later, their bodies thrown considerable distances.

Although the Antwerp rebels were unable to exploit the effect of the explosion, probably because they too were simply shocked by its effect, the incident achieved immediate notoriety across Europe and great interest from military experts who recognized this as a new type of warfare.

Three years later when the Spanish Armada came to invade England, the use of fireships caused panic among the Spanish fleet, because of concerns that they could be loaded with explosives.. and by then they knew that Giambelli was overtly in England, working for the Queen. The Spanish Fleet was seriously disrupted and control of it was never regained by its admirals. And as a result, my Spanish language skills are limited today to ordering “Dos cervezas, por favor”  I have grossly simplified a complex action here, but hopefully blog readers will appreciate the unusual construct of the IED on the Fortuyn and the Hoop, and see the significance of the initiation mechanism.   In another aside and related to the last post about the assassination of generals….When the Prince of Parma, the Spanish General did ride into Antwerp, some months later, a conqueror, there had been a plot to kill him and everybody near him by blowing up a street over which it was calculated he would be sure to pass. Nothing came of this, because the plot was revealed before the procession occurred.

One final thought…. The Hoop attack concept was used again… in 1809 when British Admiral Cochrane attacked the French in the Basque Roads attack, and again in 1942, when the bomb ship HMS Campbelltown rammed the gates of the drydock in the St Nazaire raid as part of “Operation Chariot”.

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