Standing Well Back
19th Century

Rockets – a reassessment, a mystery and a discovery

In my recent posts about the Irish rebellion in 1803, I suggested that the crucial development seen at the end of the 1700s and early 1800s was the introduction of a metal rocket casing to increase the internal pressure and hence range of the rockets.   This assessment is stated as a fact in a number of sources, discussing the development of Congreve’s rockets and their metal bodies. I also assumed that the reports suggesting that it was Emmet’s rockets that were a new development and inspired Congreve were right.   There are many historical textbooks which suggest that the designs that emerged in the first few years of the 1800’s were significant developments from the Indian rockets of Tipu Sultan the Indian leader of the Mysore wars. Well, it seems the textbooks, and I were wrong, but in finding this out I encountered something remarkable.  Bear with me as I tell the tale.

Firstly, read my last post about how Emmet in Dublin 1803 manufactured his newly invented rockets. Note that the rockets were described as being two and a half inches in diameter, how the maker, Johnstone “consulted a scientific work respecting the way such materials should be prepared” and that “An iron needle was placed in the centre of the tube around which the mortar was tempered, and when the needle was drawn out, the hole was filled with powder”. Also it describes Johnstone using the written instructions which gave the number of blows used to tap the rocket propellant into place with a mallet.

I then went searching for more historical documents relating to rocket development, and found a copy of this document, dated 1696, a hundred and seven years prior to the Dublin rebellion. This is a book written by Robert Anderson, a researcher in ordnance and artillery working for the Earl of Romney, then “Master General of his majesties Ordnance”. All of a sudden things got interesting very quickly.

On page A4 of the document, here, it says halfway down, “I have given easie, plain and ready Rules for making of Rockets to two Inches and half diameter.”

I sat up. Two and a half inches? Could that be a coincidence? I dived deeper.

The book first describes how to make the rocket motor moulds.  Then on page B2 it describes “the bottom of the Rocket-Mould with the Needle to be put in and taken out:”

Then on page B3 it describes filling the rocket composition with charges and tapping the charges into place “and to every Charge  10, 12 or 14 blows with a Mallet”

So, it is very clear to me that Emmet and his rebels were not making newly developed rockets, learned from the experience of the East India Company’s battles against Tipu Sultan – they were making rockets to the specific design of a two and a half inch rocket design of Englishman Robert Anderson, written over a hundred years earlier in 1696, and using the same document I have in front of me now.  Remarkable.  I’m not aware of anyone realising that link before now.

I then went a couple of pages further on and found this diagram. The adjoining text clearly states that the rocket body (AFEB) is made from a piece of gun barrel, and is metal, not pasteboard. Thus the English (and Anderson specifically) had already designed metal rocket bodies over a hundred years before Emmet and subsequently Congreve used the same concept. Many references (incluidng Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipaedia) have this wrong ascribing such development to Tipu Sultan a hundred years later.

So, I think this changes our view of history. Emmets’s rockets were not his own development – they were explicitly built from instructions from an English developer over a hundred years old by 1803. Also, Congreve’s rockets were not new in using metal bodies to increase the internal pressure of the rocket motor – that too was achieved by the same developer, Anderson in 1696.

I find it fascinating that rebels today are making their own versions of these munitions, in hidden rooms in Syria, 300 years since Anderson, and 200 years since Emmet copied his designs, constructed them in hidden rooms in Dublin and first used them in a rebellion. Of course today’s rockets have changes in design and in the rocket composition – but in effect, frankly, they are pretty darned similar.

19th Century

The mystery of “the man with no history”, other spies and Emmet’s rockets and IEDs

I’ve been on the trail of a mystery and found some interesting descriptions of Emmet’s IEDs from (see earlier posts).   In the attempted uprising in Dublin in 1803, Emmet designed some “exploding beams” as referred to as “Emmet’s infernals”. Here’s a description of how they were made:

Mr. Emmet had several square beams, twelve feet long, sent to the depot at Thomas Street, which he intended to have got bored with a small pump auger, not in the centre but nearer one side, and the hole was to be perforated to within one foot of the end, and then filled with powder till it came to a foot from the mouth. The hole was then stopped with a plug a foot long, of the same diameter, well spiked to prevent it from coming out. A touch-hole was to be perforated in the middle of the beam on the side which the bore approached the nearest, and a pivot set on each end on which common car wheels were placed and turned. Two cases five feet long each, filled with small stones and combustibles were to be placed at the top of the beam. The explosion of this machine placed as an obstacle before the enemy must have a terrible effect.

I’ve also found a description of how the rockets were constructed in the concealed workshops behind false walls.  There is no mention of the exploding “warhead’ which I also assumed was present.  Perhaps I might reassess that assumption – at least some Rockets used by Tipu Sultan in the Mysore campaign a few years earlier relied on blades attached to the front of the rocket, and maybe didn’t have an exploding warhead.

Emmet assigned to a Mr Johnstone the task of preparing the rockets and left him very detailed instructions.  Mr Johnstone is described as being some sort of expert – crucially it is said that he had previously served with the East India Company and perhaps made rockets for them – this would have been about the time that The East India company was fighting the Mysore wars against Tipu Sultan, who were using rockets against the Company.  Perhaps Johnstone was involved in making copies for the East India Company and brought his expertise to Dublin.

Here’s the description from a primary source:

There was a man who went by the name of Johnstone who had spent several years in the East India service, where he had frequently been employed in preparing fire-works. Perhaps this man with Robert Emmet were the real inventors of those rockets, latterly universally known under the appellation of Congreve rockets — be that as it may, I think it only right to relate here all I know of the matter. At Mr. Emmet’s request I called on Mr. M. the gunsmith, and showed him a strong piece of paper shaped in a certain way, which was to serve as a model to have tubes twenty inches long, two and a-half inches diameter, cut out of strong sheet iron; as soldering would be liable to melt with the fire, they were to be clasped and well hammered on the joints, which would render them quite solid. The sloped shape at one end formed a point like an arrow. The gunsmith soon brought me a tube made after the model with which both Mr. Emmet and Johnstone were well pleased. Consequently I had to tell him to have several hundreds of the same description made as soon as possible.

Johnstone set to work mixing the ingredients to fill those tubes, composed of powder, nitre, sulphur, etc., and when this stuff was prepared, it had the appearance of wet mortar. But everything was done according to Mr. Emmet’s instructions; he consulted a scientific work respecting the way such materials should be prepared, and even the way the tubes were to be filled, the size of each portion to be put in at a time, the weight of the hammer, the plug to drive it down, the number of strokes to be given before another portion was put in.  An iron needle was placed in the centre of the tube around which the mortar was tempered, and when the needle was drawn out, the hole was then filled with powder. Thus prepared, they were to be fastened with strong wire to a slight pole about eight feet long at one end; and from the other end a cord prepared as a fuse would convey the fire to the mouth of the tube. A small trestle four feet high was provided on which the pole was to rest to be poised and sent off in the direction of the enemy.

Here’s a description of a trial firing

Johnstone, who was making the rockets, brought one of them ready prepared, so we all went into the fields; that is, Mr. Emmet, Russell, Dowdall, Hamilton, etc. The rocket was made fast to a pole with wire, and rested on a trestle ; the match being put to it, it went off like a thunderbolt, carrying the pole along with it, and throwing flames and fire behind, as it advanced, and when it fell, it went on tearing up the ground till the last of the matter with which it was filled was completely consumed. Mr. Emmet and Johnstone were quite satisfied with the effect it produced, and they decided that all the rockets or tubes should be prepared and filled in the same manner; the cord which was placed along the pole to serve as a train or match did not communicate the fire quick enough, but that was easily remedied at the depot by preparing others with stronger liquid, etc.

Now Johnston is an interesting character and aside from his supposed service with the East India Company is described as “a man with no past”. According to one report Johnstone was working in one of the rocket making workshops when an “accident” occurred and it blew up, blowing the roof off the building. This caused Emmet to launch his rebellion prematurely.  He then disappears from the scene.  Emmet’s associates accused him of being a British spy who blew up the workshop on the orders of British spymasters, citing his lack of history, his disappearance and the fact that the British did not investigate the explosion as significant factors.

Another, conflicting, report says that the explosion as caused by a Michael McDaniel – who was drinking at the time and accidentally initiated a fuze he was preparing. This report suggests that after the explosion he was tasked by Emmet with buying blunderbusses for the rebels. Emmet gave him “60 guineas” for the purchase, but McDaniel disappeared with the money never to be seen again.

Another of the rebels involved Pat Fenerty became a “super-grass” and gave evidence against the rebels, before ending up working Woolwich on the British Congreve rockets.

Complicated, but certainly indicative of a disastrous rebellion riven with incompetence and British spies.

18th Century

Woosh, Bang, Ohnasty!

This is just a follow up to my last post.  I’ve been searching for more details of Emmet’s rockets and other IEDs in Dublin in 1803 . The more I read about Emmet’s uprising the more I see strong similarities between the current Syrian revolution and Dublin.

To get the current context, have a trawl through the “Brown Moses” blog here :

Note the current context of home made rockets and “DIY” IEDs being produced in workshops.   Now, Dublin of 1803 wasn’t all that different:

  • Rebels were inspired by revolutions taking place elsewhere.   In Ireland it was the American revolution and the French revolution that inspired a group of Irish nationalists. Today the Syrian rebels are inspired by the other Arab spring revolutions.
  • Emmet established five improvised munition workshops across Dublin.  My instinct tells me that these looked very similar to some of the workshops seen producing improvised weaponry in Aleppo.  In Syria, here’s a range of home made weapons and IEDs
  • In Dublin Emmet produced the IEDs and munitions with a team of 40 people across his five Dublin  workshops. Interestingly the workshops were well disguised behind false walls. I described the IEDs in my last post, below.

I’ve been trying to find more details of the design of rockets developed by Emmet. Rockets had become something of a flavour at the time – The French had been using rockets on the battlefield for the previous few decades, but with limited effect. Then in the Mysore wars in India the British found themselves attacked by effective rockets with explosive warheads, to their great consternation.

The British captured a number of  Mysorean rockets  in 1799 and examined them (another example of early technical intelligence activities).  Emmet would have been aware of their impact on the British military.

As mentioned in the earlier post Emmet met the American Robert Fulton in Paris at about this time, and Fulton too had expertise in rocketry which he may have passed on.

The key development here, which the Mysore rockets utilized, was to use a metal case for the rocket body. Until then the bodies where generally paste board (as in modern fireworks).  A pasteboard body limits the internal pressure possible and therefore the size and range fo the rocket.  But much higher internal pressures are possible with metal bodies. Both the Mysore rockets, Emmet’s rockets and the very slightly later British Congreve rockets all used a metal body.

How much the British Congreve Rocket system was influenced by Emmet’s rocket designs is unclear – but very interestingly there is a report that one of Emmet’s assistants, a Mr Pat Finerty, subsequently went to work at Woolwich where Congreve’s rockets were under development after the events in Dublin.  Congreve’s rocket was described as an improvement on, but similar in design to Emmet’s.   Here’s a diagram of an early Congreve rocket, which is therefore likely to have been broadly similar to Emmet’s rockets.

Note that there is a warhead at the front, and the warhead at the front is initiated by a burning fuze running the length of the outside of the rocket body. The rocket motor and the warhead fuse would have been lit simultaneously.   The stabilising “stick” is not shown in this diagram.  Congreve rockets would have been initiated by a flintlock mechanism, but Emmets probably with a simpler burning fuze. Here’s a picture of a Congreve flintlock mechanism. the string is a lanyard to the release spring , I think which releases the cock hammer.

Emmet’s rockets were intended to be deployed to be fired at cavalry, and also as signal rockets – I’m not sure if that entirely makes sense, given the fuzing mechanism – they would make much more effective indirect fire area weapons, perhaps fired into British garrisons.   Nonetheless horizontally fired munitions (although not technically rockets) aimed at the British Military were being used by Irish terrorists some 200 years later.  As such I think Emmet’s rockets have an important place in history.  I also think that although they had been used on the battlefield before, this was the first use of such technology by freedom fighters/ terrorists.

The truth is however that Emmet’s revolution was nothing short of a shambles, and the rockets and the explosives beams and the grenade IEDs barely got used, if at all. Emmet’s purported notes after the failed uprising gives a frank and candid account:

  • Emmet describes his detailed plan for the deployment of pikemen, “beam” IEDs and rockets across Dublin, in detail. He describes the plan for deploying caltrops and anti-cavalry boards with nails in them, chains across streets, deployment of grenades and stones to throw, and muskets.  But the deployment never actually occurred, because the United Irishman expected to man the positions, from Kildare and Wicklow failed to arrive.  There was evidence of confusion and poor communication between the revolutionary elements, and possible the spreading by British agents of incorrect information.  Emmet expected several thousand rebels supporting him, but eventually had less than a hundred, and even these he couldn’t control, a good proportion of then being “with drink”.
  • Due to a lack of funds, scarcely any of the expected blunderbusses were bought
  • The man designated as being responsible for preparing the fuzes for the “exploding beam” IEDs “forgot” to prepare them and went on an errand to Kildare.
  • An accidental explosion at one of the IED workshops prevented much of the material being stored there being available.
  • The slow matches used to initiate grenades and beam IEDs were prepared incorrectly and would not function.
  • The same person responsible for the slow matches then “lost” the grenade fuzes.
  • Other material such as scaling ladders and irons to chain up streets were not prepared in time.
  • Emmet describes the eventual disaster as “a failure in plan, preparation and men”

There is a strong suspicion that some of the failures were “helped along “ by British agents.

In a future post I’ll look at the evolutions of Congreve’s and later rockets.  Nowadays rockets are almost invariably fin stabilized – have a look at this one spotted recently by Brown Moses – but for some time the “stick method” was used by Congreve and subsequent rocket designs and of course remains in modern fireworks.

I find it fascinating that rockets have returned to the revolutionaries arsenal.

19th Century

Revolution and Invention – Comparing Syria in 2012 with Ireland in 1803

1803 saw an attempted revolution in Ireland, that has some interesting parallels with today’s conflict in Syria.  Robert Emmet  (1778-1803) was the leader of the revolution and was sponsored to some degree by other regional states (France under Napoleon and individuals from the USA).  Emmet and his fellow revolutionaries had been inspired by the revolutions in both those nations (perhaps similar to the Arab spring revolutions inspiring events in Syria).

Emmet was an enthusiastic inventor who developed innovative home made weapons and probably the first Irish IEDs.  While in Paris trying to encourage Napoleon’s support for Irish revolution he met Robert Fulton, and seems to have been inspired by his use of explosives (I’ve discussed Fulton before, here)

Emmet returned to Ireland to plan the revolution. He designed rockets to be launched in salvoes from special batteries, and so called “infernals” which were hollowed-out beams packed with gunpowder to be pulled into the middle of streets to halt cavalry charges.  The devices were crafted by Emmet’s assistants in Marshal Lane South and Patrick Street. Essentially, the infernals were bored and plugged logs packed with black powder and readied for initiation by burning fuses. Each log was rendered more lethal by hammering deal strips to their length that held small stones, metal scraps and nails in place. Emmet decided to bind two infernals to each other and mount them together on small carriages from which the wheels had been removed. Thus elevated, immobilised and sited in confined, narrow streets, the initial blast wave would have dispersed splinters, stone shards and jagged metal with good effect.

Emmet also designed and had made numerous grenades. In one depot alone Emmet had 240 hand grenades made to his own design, formed of ink bottles filled with gunpowder and encircled with buckshot; 100 larger grenades made from wine bottles covered with canvas; numerous rockets and flares; explosive beams; and fire balls made of flax, tar and gunpowder which would stick to walls when thrown and burn fiercely when ignited.

Subsequently the revolution failed when key potential supporters failed to commit – in particular key parties of United Irishman revolutionaries from Kildare and Wicklow failed to join the fight.  Emmet failed to control other revolutionaries and the effort rapidly descended into farce.

Nonetheless the concept of Emmet’s “infernals” seems to have inspired Irish revolutionaries for a couple of centuries. And revolutions today in Libya and Syria are still characterized by innovative use of home made explosive devices and other weapons.  Brown Moses posts some excellent analysis of improvised weapon systems in Syria and frankly some of them wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Dublin in 1803.

 

 

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!

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