Standing Well Back
1840-1850

The Death of Tommy Atkins

There’s been discussion on the letters pages of “The Times” about the origins of the “Tommy Atkins” reference – the standard typical British soldier with all the phlegmatic character so well described by Kipling. Well, it turns out that Kipling didn’t “invent” the name out of the blue, and the history of Tommy Atkins as a real person is moving, dramatic and a little older.

In 1843, The Duke of Wellington, a national hero, former Prime Minister and Victor of Waterloo was a “Minister without Portfolio”. He was an elderly man of 73 and the Grand Old Man of the British establishment. The previous year he had been re-appointed as Commander in Chief of the Army.


The Duke of Wellington, aged 74

Officers on the Army Staff came to show him a new piece of bureaucracy – a form that soldiers had to sign to claim their allowances. They wanted to create a “typical entry” as a guide for soldiers entering their details. The discussion turned to the name that the guide should use as its example, and they asked the old General his opinion.

Wellington sat back and thought. He recalled one of his earlier campaigns, in the Low Countries in 1793. After a battle he had come across a gravely wounded solider, lying on the ground. That soldier had served in the Grenadiers for 20 years, could neither read nor write, but was the “best Man-at-Arms in the Regiment”. His name was Thomas Atkins.  Atkins was severely wounded, and had begged the stretcher bearers to leave him be, so that he could die in peace.  Looking up and seeing the Duke’s concern, the man uttered his last words. “It’s all right, Sir. It’s all in a day’s work.”

Wellington still remembered that experience, 50 years later, and so the name on the form and for every British soldier since became “Thomas Atkins”.

19th Century

Confederate IED organization

Careful reading of the excellent book “The sinking of the USS Cairo” by John Wideman, has allowed me to piece together some of the Confederate “IED” organization in the US Civil War and pull together some threads of incidents I’ve previously blogged about. Here’s a simplified summary with a series of links to the relevant posts

The leader of many such IED activities was Brigadier Gabriel Raines. Raines’s interest in IEDs went back to the Second Seminole Indian war in Florida, where he deployed IEDs against the Seminole Indians in 1840.

Gabriel Raines

Later, when the US civil war began he rapidly proposed the use of similar devices, and used them successfully in the retreat after the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862.

This book is a reprint of Raines technical notes about a number of munitions and IEDs.

Raines oversaw the Confederate use of such devices from the Confederate War department’s Torpedo Bureau (“Torpedo”) being a term that then covered a range of land and sea explosive devices).  At the beginning of the war, Raines’s devices were very much improvised, but eventually volume requirements and industrial processes evolved such that eventually many can be considered manufactured munitions.  Within the confederate forces the use of explosive devices was broad ranging and what follows is not the sum total, but there appear to have been two units.

The first was the Confederate States Navy submarine Battery service, under Hunter Davidson which appears to have been responsible for coastal defence sea mines and the like, often electrically initiated.  In  particular this unit had significant success on the James River. Later in the war attention turned to spar torpedo boats (boats with an explosive charge attached to a long spar which were used to ram enemy boats) . Hunter Davidson is an interesting character who I’ll write about in the future.  Here’s an angry letter he wrote in 1874 when some impertinent Brirtish Engineer officers claimed to have invented electrically initiated sea mines

The second unit, was commanded by the one-armed perpetrator of the sinking of the USS Cairo on the Yazoo River, Zere McDaniel

Zere McDaniel was responsible for

  •  Riverine IEd operations such as the sinking of the Cairo
  •  “Land torpedoes” in defence around Richmond, that used artillery shells adapted to detonate when stood upon (designed by Raines)
  •  “Behind the lines” IED and associated sabotage and intelligence operations.

The latter enterprises were as head of a Confederate secret unit “ Company A, Confederate secret service. The unit was formed in 1864 according to instructions that can be seen on this web page – a lovely document!

Some examples of the “behind the lines” operations included the explosion at City Point by Maxwell who reported directly to McDaniel and who used a time bomb or “horological torpedo”

Attacks on trains by Zere McDaniel himself using an IED which I’ll discuss in a future blog once I have found more detail.  Suffice to say that the initiation mechanism appears to have been an improvised wire hook which protruded from under the track and “hooked on” to the front of a passing train, probably pulling a friction initiator.

The confederate use of IEDs appears to have been positively encouraged and a secret law was passed awarding a bounty to confederate supporters who designed IEDs and used them to attack Union forces, awarding the designer 50% of the value of the target. McDaniel himself tried to claim for his attack on the Cairo, but failed in his appeal.   In 1864 McDaniel reported that his unit were engaged in continuous active operations , with elements operating “behind enemy lines” in Kentucky, Virginia and elsewhere

I see interesting parallels between the innovative use of munitions and explosive devices in the US civil war and the remarkable inventiveness of Syrian opposition forces in today’s Syrian civil war.

1840-1850

Pull Primers

In my chronology of initiation systems, a couple of posts down, I omitted the evolution of the “pull primer” as a means of initiating charges, including artillery pieces.  I think it’s worth a look at, especially since they were clearly used to initiate the IED used to sink the USS Cairo, below.

  • Originally in cannon, bags of gunpowder were stuffed in the muzzle and pushed to the far end of the cannon.
  • The bag was then pricked so the priming fire could reach the main charge, by inserting needle like device through the vent hole into the bag charge. The vent is a small hole drilled at the rear of the cannon that led to the inside of the barrel where the bag of gunpowder sat.
  • Then loose gunpowder was poured in to the vent.  That loose gunpowder was then ignited with a slow burning fuse, red hot iron, or other flame like a portfire to the touch hole, or top of the vent. At one stage a paper tube was inserted that held a preloaded quantity of powder to allow a pre-loaded quantity of powder.
  • That method was a little crude, and in 1765 an improvement was developed, which was to insert a tin tube containing blackpowder into the vent.  This ensured that the end of the powder train in the tube was in the right physical position to ignite the main charge, increasing reliability.
  • Later the tin tube was replaced with a goose quill.
  • In the late 1700s a flintlock mechanism began to be used to initiate the vent powder.
  • In 1846 a Hanoverarian artillery officer invented the pull primer. This consisted of a tube (usually copper) which contained blackpowder as before, but also a friction sensitive match compound. Inserted into the tube was length of flattened, serrated wire, which when pulled through the match compound created enough heat from friction to cause the match compound and then the powder to ignite.  This became a reliable, weatherproof, initiator for artillery pieces, and the post on the sinking of the USS Cairo below demonstrates how such a mechanism can be used for IEDs as a command initiation system from a distance, or as a component of a booby trap pull switch.

 

In typical pull primers the base of the tube is closed by varnished paper, and the top by shellac putty and varnished paper. A ring is attached to the top of the wire that protrudes through the shellac putty.  The operator used his “lanyard” to clip onto the ring and pull from the side – lanyards now are an archaic part of a lot of military uniforms.   The match composition was usually a mix of potassium chlorate and another compound.

Friction primers were eventually replaced by percussion primers, which essentially were a percussion cap fitted to the top of the tube, which a mechanism on the gun struck.

1840-1850

Some of my best friends are Sappers… (Sappers, Doctors, explosives and smoking dope)

My last post about the evolution of detonators involved digging around in some interesting history. I came across two fascinating reports about a British military engineering operation on the Hoogly River in Bengal in 1839 and 1840. The crucial piece about this story is that it straddled the invention of sub-aqua electrical initiation of gunpowder charges as used by Pasley with the earlier much less reliable igniferous technique, in this case using tubes of lead filled with gunpowder, soldered together.  The reports are found in the professional papers of the Royal Engineers, 1840 and Volume 8 of the Journal of the Asiatic society of Bengal, 1840. Go google if you want to read the originals.

The circumstances were that a ship, the Equitable, had sunk on a sandbank and was posing a hazard to shipping. So a young British military engineer, Captain Fitzgerald serving in the Bengal Engineers and some colleagues decided to blow it up, as is the wont of young Engineer officers.  In this case (and not for the last time), they were accompanied, encouraged and assisted by a young medical officer

So, this was a complex operation in a fast flowing and murky river. The Equitable had sunk in October 1839 in the middle of the shipping channel.  It was decided to use large gunpowder charges to break up the vessel.

Attempt 1, Igniferous – Failed.

The first attempt used a large waterproof cylinder full of gunpowder, ignited by means of a linen hose protected by lead piping.  The charge was an enormous 2400 pounds of powder.  The cylinder was an oak cask, bound with iron hoops, and plates of lead were carefully soldered onto it to seal it. The lead pipe protecting the powder train in the hose was made from four 15 feet lengths, soldered carefully together. The hose, one inch in diameter and containing gunpowder was then inserted into the pipe.  I have a description of the explosive chain between the main charge and the gunpowder hose, but have not yet found an associated diagram. so I can’t yet make head or tail of it.  The characteristics of a loose filled gunpowder hose clearly gave rise to challenges, in terms of transmission of the igniferous process in a vertical pipe. To manage this the hose was knotted every 6 inches, and held in place by fastening to a pewter wire inserted down the length of the pipe.

The seal between the powder hose in the pipe and the “primer cylinder” appears to have been achieved with brass fittings and leather gaskets.

The first attempt took place on December 6 1839, and the charge was lowered from a boat onto the deck of the sunken ship.  A “portfire” with an estimated burning time of 10 minutes fastened to the top of the gunpowder filled pipe, and the boat rowed away.  However the portfire failed to ignite the gunpowder train. A second portfire was set, and after a few minutes a muffled small explosion was heard, which was assessed as being the pipe rupturing. The main charge failed to ignite, and the pewter wire was ejected from the lead pipe. The pipe was raised and the rupture found at 25 feet from the top.

Attempt 2. Timed, electrical, using a watch – Successful

For the second attempt the Egineer team, encouraged by a medical doctor William O’Shaugnessy, and no doubt hearing of the success of Pasley, used an electrical initiation method.  O’Shaugnessy “read up” on electrical theory and designed and built his own galvanic battery, a description of which can be found in the reference. O’Shaugnessy conducted several experiments with his battery and platinum wire or platinum foil filaments, making the foil white heat with its electrcial resistance.  Working the physics, O’Shaughnessy established that with some careful design he could initiate the platinum filaments through bare un-insulated wire, under water, provided he kept the “legs” sufficiently far apart and the battery powerful enough.  He also designed a highly ingenious system for holding the filament in a sealed container using a breech of a gun.  Furthermore O’Shaugnessy then designed a remarkable timing initiation using a simple watch, copper “arms” and mercury filled tubes that the copper arms of the watch swept through that automatically “made safe” the firing circuit four minutes after initiation, so it would be safe to recover if the initiation failed.  It is clear from O’Shaugnessy’s report that he had no actual reports of Pasley’s successes other than newspaper reports, and so was working on first principles.

The second attempt took place on 14 December 1839, using this electrical mechanism, the battery and timer being in a small fishing boat above the charge. After setting charge, the demolition party consisting of Capts Fitzgerald and Debude, and Lieutenant Smith, accompanied by O’Shaughnessy and his assistant Mr Siddons, rowed quickly away.  Here’s O’Shaugnessy’s description of the subsequent explosion:

At the thirteenth minute a slight concussion was was felt in our boat, a sound like that of a very distant and heavy gun at sea was heard, and a huge hemispherical mass of discoloured water was thrown to the height of about 30 feet. From the centre of this mass there then rose slowly a and majestically a pillar of water, intermingled with foam and fragments of wreck , and preserving a cylindrical form till it reached an elevation of at least 150 feet. The column then subsided slowly, a wreath of foam and sparking jets of water following its descent, and rendering the spectacle one of indescribable beauty.

O’Shaughnessy later also significantly improved the manner in which the heated platinum filament ignites the charge. Previously the heated filament was embedded directly into gunpowder but O’Shaughnessy found that by embedding the filament in cotton which had been soaked in a solution of “purest saltpeter” effectively lowered the temperature that the filament was required to reach to cause ignition.

Attempt 3, Electrical using an improvised timing mechanism involving portfires and “string” – Failed

A third operation occurred a month later to remove a large part of the sunken wreck still remaining, and this too used a timing mechanism and electrical initiation, however the system failed to initiate due to damage to the priming charge where it was fastened to the main charge.  The sapper officers revised the mechanical timing mechanism of an adapted watch used by O’Shaughnessy and used portfires burning string at timed intervals to make and then break a circuit if detonation had not occurred – I see in the different reports of Capt Fitzgerald and Dr O’Shaughnessy a little irritation from the good doctor as to the contrived nature of this measure, which he regards as crude an unreliable, but which the sapper officers are very proud of (it saved the expense of a watch).

Attempt 4. Electrical using an improvised timing mechanism involving portfires and “string” – Successful

A fourth operation took place on 28th January 1840.  A successful explosion took place, breaking up the remaining part of the wreck and also killing two porpoises.

O’Shaughnessy went on to an interesting career where he was involved in pharmacology, the electric telegraph, encryption and most famously the introduction of cannabis to the UK for “therapeutic use”.

19th Century

Siemens Tangents – Command Wire IEDs of 1848

Following the post below about micro IEDs in Siemens equipment I’m going to go off on a wild tangent here. Hold on.

I’m reminded by the mention of Siemens about much earlier IEDs associated with the Siemens founder, Werner von Siemens in the 1840s.  For context, in the US Samuel Colt developed a number of sea mines, and in Russia, Alfred Nobel’s father Emmanuel Nobel worked for the Russians developing a contact fuze for sea mines used in the Crimean war against British naval vessels in the Baltic.  (A similar contact fuze, named the Jacobi fuze, but actually designed by Nobel was also used in improvised land mines in the Crimea).

Werner von Siemens was a German electrical engineer and inventor who developed electrically initiated command detonated water borne IEDs which protected the waters off Kiel and prevented Danish naval bombardment of the city during the Schleswig-Holstein war in 1848.   I’m amused that Siemens was placed under “honorary arrest” for being a second in a duel, and used his time in gaol to conduct chemistry experiments.

Siemens’s sister lived in Kiel where her husband was a chemistry professor. They lived close to the harbour in Kiel and were potentially vulnerable to Danish attack.   As Siemens says in his autobiography:

This led me to the then entirely novel idea of defending the harbour by submarine mines fired by electricity. My wires insulated with gutta-percha offered a means of exploding such mines at the right moment in safety from the shore. I communicated this plan to my brother-in-law, who took it up warmly and immediately submitted it to the provisional government for the defence of the country. The latter approved of it and despatched a special emissary to the Prussian Government, with the request to grant me permission to execute the plan. My authorized employment or even mere leave of absence for this warlike purpose was however opposed on the ground that peace still reigned between Prussia and Denmark. But it was intimated to me that I should receive the desired permission if circumstances changed, as was expected. 

I employed this waiting time in making preparations. Large and particularly strong canvas – bags rendered watertight by caoutchouc (rubber) were got ready, each capable of holding about five hundred- weight of powder. Further, wires insulated in all haste and exploding contrivances were prepared, and the necessary galvanic batteries procured for firing. When the departmental chief in the war-office. General von Reyher, in whose ante-room I daily waited for the decision, at last made the communication, that he had just been appointed minister and war having been resolved against Denmark, that he granted me the desired furlough as the first act of hostilities against Denmark, my preparations were almost completed, and on the same evening I left for Kiel. 

My brother-in-law in Kiel had meanwhile made all the preparations in order to proceed quickly with the laying of the mines, as the appearance of the Danish fleet was daily expected. A ship-load of powder had already arrived from Rendsburg, and a number of large casks stood ready well calked and pitched, in order to be provisionally used instead of the still unfinished caoutchouc-bags. These casks were as quickly as possible filled with powder, provided with fuses, and anchored in the rather narrow channel in front of the bathing establishment in such a way that they were buoyed twenty feet under the surface of the water. The firing-wires were carried to two covered points on the shore, and the course of the current so disposed that a mine must explode if at both points simultaneously contact was made.  At both places of observation upright rods were set up and the instruction given, that contact must be made, if a hostile ship took up a position in the direct line of the rods, and remain made until the ship had again completely removed from the right line. If contact of both right lines were at any moment simultaneously made the ship would be exactly over the mines. By experiments with small mines and boats it was ascertained that this exploding arrangement acted with perfect certainty. 

Later in the war the casks were replaced with “caoutchouc” india rubber bags and Siemens used the casks as command initiated land based IEDs to protect the fortifications around Kiel. One of these detonated prematurely, as follows:

The rest of the men I had collected in the fortress-yard to distribute them and exhort them to bravery, when suddenly before the fort-gate rose a vast fire -sheaf. I felt a violent compression succeeded by a violent expansion of the chest: the first sensation was accompanied by the clatter of broken window-panes, and the second by the elevation of the tiles of all the roofs to the height of a foot and their subsequent fall with a dreadful din. Of course it could only be the mine, whose explosion had produced the mischief. I thought at once of my poor brother Fritz. I ran to the gate to look after him, but before I reached it he met me uninjured.

He had prepared the mine, set up the battery on the terre-plein, connected the one igniting wire with the one pole of the battery and fastened the other to the branch of a tree to have it ready to hand, and was about to announce this when the explosion occurred, and the atmospheric pressure hurled him down from the rampart into the interior of the fort. The rather violent wind had shaken the second firing-wire from the tree, causing it to fall just on the other pole of the battery and so producing the explosion.

Incidentally the same technique for sighting of targets was subsequently used in the US Civil war.

As an aside the scientific genes ran strong in the Siemens family. Werner’s younger brother was a remarkable engineer who emigrated to England, adopted British citizenship and became knighted as Sir William Siemens for his contributions to science. Another brother, Carl, an entrepreneur,  worked in Russia developing the Russian telegraph system.  He was ennobled for this by Tsar Nichlas II.

So a number of industrial dynasties, (Colt, Nobel and Siemens) all had beginnings based on the development of IEDs….

 

 

Update on Wednesday, September 26, 2012 at 1:50PM by Roger Davies

Just to clarify in terms of the relative dates of inventions:

Samuel Colt demonstrated  a working electrically initiated water borne mine in 1841.

Werner Siemens’s Kiel devices seem to have been independently invented in 1848.

Immanuel Nobel seems to have taken Siemens’s idea and created contact fuzing in 1853.

…or thereabouts….

Colt’s IED’s were not brought into service in the US because it was objected to by then Congressman John Quincy Adams who scuttled the project as “not fair and honest warfare” and called the Colt mine an “unchristian contraption”  But such mines were later used extensively in the Civil war.

Update on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 6:15PM by Roger Davies

Ok, there’s another man in the mix for earliest electrically initiated sea mines. Engineer in Chief Schilder of the Russian Navy in the 1830s.

 

 

Update on Friday, November 2, 2012 at 10:52PM by Roger Davies

And another  even earlier Baron von Schilling was making electrically initiated command sea mines and land mines for the Russians in 1812.

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