Sir William Congreve’s son, Congreve the Younger, inherited
his father ‘s technical talents and went on to gain even greater fame through
his invention of the rockets that bore his name. Having arrived first from
China centuries earlier, rockets had long been used in India before the British
arrived. The younger Congreve became fascinated by examples held in the Royal
Artillery Museum of captured war rockets used by the sultan of Mysore, Tippo
Sahib, against British forces at Seringapatam in India during the 1790s.
Impressed by the rockets’ incendiary capabilities and lack of recoil upon
firing, Congreve began a series of experiments that resulted in two primary
types, specifically designed for naval and land use.
Their main body was a tube constructed of multiple layers of
tightly wrapped paper to which was attached a long stabilizing stick.
Congreve’s earliest rockets were thus, in appearance and function, nothing more
than giant versions of the modern toy bottle rocket. Although acceptable incendiaries,
these prototypes, however, did not have sufficient compression to provide
damaging concussion, while their paper wrappings were decidedly lacking in
lethality as shrapnel for military purposes. Soon after, however, Congreve
replaced the rockets ‘ paper tubes with ones of more durable and potentially
deadly sheet iron.
Britain began production of Congreve’s rockets in 1805, and
soon after field use indicated the need for further improvements, the chief of
which addressed the placement of the stabilizing stick. The average naval and
land-use Congreve stick was 15 feet in length, naval sticks being of one solid
piece with land-use sticks being assembled from smaller segments on site to
assist in transportation. Both types were initially attached to the outside of
the length of the rocket tube before launching by means of three iron ferules.
This arrangement, however, made the rockets somewhat unstable in flight, and
thus gained them an early reputation for inaccuracy. Congreve eventually
replaced the earlier arrangement by placing a threaded stick mounting in the
center of the rocket’s base plate, with the exhaust vents arrayed around it to
produce a much more stable and accurate weapon. Still, although Congreve’s
invention had an extreme maximum range of approximately 3 miles, accuracy was
always unreliable, making it necessary to fire barrages of rockets for
appreciable effect.
Congreve’s The Rocket System, published in 1814, indicates
that the classification of his rocket warheads (not including the stick weight)
closely matched the standard conventional artillery ammunition of the day.
These included 6-, 7-, and 8-inch carcasses, as well as 32- and 42-pound
carcasses. In addition, there were also 9-, 12-, 18-, 24-, and 32-pounder
shells and case shot rockets and a 6- pounder shell. The 32-pounder was the
most widely used, being the smallest size for siege work and the largest for
field deployment. Its 15-foot stick was mounted on a 3-foot cylindrical body,
with carcasses being fitted with a sharply pointed conical nose and shells a
more rounded nose. By 1813 two artillery troops were attached to the Royal
Horse Artillery, with 6-, 9-, 12-, and 18-pounder rockets being the most common
sizes for field use.
Still, the new technology was far from perfected. A
firsthand account by a British artillery officer at Waterloo gives a quite
candid picture of the horse artillery rocketeers in action:
Meanwhile the
rocketeers had placed a little iron triangle in the road with a rocket lying on
it. The order to fire is given-port-fir e applied-the fidgety missile begins to
sputter out sparks and wriggle its tail for a second or so, and then darts
forth straight up the chaussée. A gun stands right in its way, between the
wheels of which the shell in the head of the rocket bursts, the gunners fall
right and left, and, those of the other guns taking their heels, the battery is
deserted in an instant. Strange; but so it was. I saw them run, and for some
minutes afterwards I saw the guns standing mute and unmanned, whilst our
rocketeers kept shooting off rockets, none of which ever followed the course of
the first; most of them, on arriving about the middle of the ascent, took a
vertical direction, whilst some actually turned back upon ourselves-and one of
these, following me like a squib until its shell exploded, actually put me in
more danger than all the fire of the enemy throughout the day. ( Mercer, 153)
Naval Rockets
Rockets used by the Royal Navy were typically larger than
those intended for field use and were launched by specially outfitted sloops of
war or smaller ship’s boats. Whereas these naval launchers were of wood
construction and securely mounted to the vessel, land launchers, or firing
frames, were of metal and designed to be disassembled for transport. The
Congreve firing frame consisted of two iron or steel front legs that attached
at their apex to twin metal channels enabling the frame to launch two rockets
in quick succession. Earlier frames, for firing side-mounted stick rockets,
utilized “half pipes” or troughs that provided less than reliable
initial guidance to the rockets. After about 1815, with the introduction of the
centerstick rockets, these half-pipes were replaced with full-pipes or complete
tubes that acted much like a gun barrel in aiming. Elevation was accomplished
by adjusting the distance between the front legs, and ignition by pulling a
cord attached to a flintlock mechanism similar to that used on small arms of
the period.
Congreve advocated barrages of large numbers of rapid or
preferably instantaneously fired rockets to attain maximum destructive effect
on targets-sound advice in that the rockets, despite improvements, remained
notoriously unreliable. This doctrine was first tested in 1806, when eighteen
boats launched 200 rockets in thirty minutes with limited success against
Boulogne. This early trial was dwarfed the following year, when British forces
launched a sustained barrage of some 40,000 incendiary rockets against
Copenhagen, igniting hugely destructive fires throughout the city. British
forces also used rockets against the Americans in the War of 1812, burning
areas of Washington, DC. They were less successful in their 1814 bombardment of
Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, accomplishing little more than providing
inspiration to Francis Scott Key’s composition of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Congreve the Younger went on to become a member of
Parliament from 1818 to 1828 and took over his father’s previous post as
comptroller of the Royal Laboratory. He also continued to formulate rocket
theory and tactics and in 1827 published the richly illustrated Treatise on the
General Principles, Powers, and Facility of Application of the Congreve Rocket
System. Owing to their inherent inaccuracy, British rockets proved most
successful as incendiary weapons against large targets, such as cities,
although their pyrotechnic characteristics proved effective in panicking
cavalry mounts and undisciplined troops. Their other main deficiency-a tendency
to fail to explode-provided those on the receiving end of rocket barrages the
opportunity to recover dud examples for study. As a result, soon after the
introduction of their secret weapon, the British had spread the new technology
throughout Europe.
European Rockets
Although Britain maintained the lead in rocket technology
and use for some fifty years, other European powers developed their own
programs. The devastating use of Congreves against Copenhagen prompted the
Danes to develop their own rockets, an endeavor greatly aided by Second
Lieutenant Andreas Schumacher, of the Danish Engineers, who recovered a nearly
intact Congreve that had had failed to detonate. Schumacher, having
disassembled the British weapon, went on to add improvements to its design,
including designing a number of larger models. By 1811, Schumacher’s efforts
led to the building of a rocket manufacturing facility at Frederiksvaerk and
eventually the establishment of the Danish Raketkompagniet (Rocket Company).
The Danes went on to share their new technology with their French allies, and
they used rockets against Hamburg during their 1813-1814 siege of that city.
Prompted by the success of the British and Danes, Austria
and France began their own significant domestic rocket research and development
programs. First headed by Chief Fireworks Master Anton Mager and later by the
capable Major Vincent Augustin, the Austrian program began in 1808 and
eventually developed into the largest on the Continent. Augustin’s efforts soon
led to the establishment of rocket manufacturing facilities at Wiener-Neustadt
near the capital that by May 1815 were engaged in mass production. That year
Austria established its own rocket corps, or Raketenbatterie , which saw action
at the Siege of Huningue.
The French rocket program also began with the recovery of
unexploded Congreves-in their case, examples gathered after the British attack
on the Ile d’Aix in 1809. The discovery soon came to the attention of Napoleon,
who ordered further research to create a French rocket program. Production
later began under the supervision of army captain Charles Moreton de Chabrillan
and navy captain Pierre Bourrée at Vincennes. After further tests at Toulon
from 1810 to 1812, production facilities were set up at Brest, Cherbourg,
Lorient, and Rochefort. A combination of their high cost and the poor
performance of the rockets against Calaise, however, led to the abandonment of
the project in the favor of conventional artillery.
Other powers including Portugal, Russia, and Sweden also
experimented with rockets but were even less successful. A Portuguese artillery
noncommissioned officer, Sergeant-Major Jeronimo Nogueira de Andrade, drew up
plans and proposed the adoption of an incendiary weapon in 1796, but little was
done in the higher levels of the bureaucracy. Russian programs were somewhat
better, in that Czar Alexander offered some encouragement, and a military study
committee was established in 1810. Still, although Lieutenant Alexander Zasydko
provided competent leadership in rocket development, the program languished in
comparison to those of Britain and Austria.
Sweden ‘s efforts showed initial promise yet encountered
resistance from a somewhat unexpected source. While visiting Copenhagen in
1810, the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius was struck by the damage still
apparent following the British rocket attack on the city three years earlier.
Seeing the potential of rockets as a weapon in his own country’s arsenal,
Berzelius entered into a collaboration with the Danish physicist Hans Christian
Orsted. Although assisted in his efforts by Danish army officers, Berzelius’s
rockets were ultimately rejected by the Danish military. Master of Ordnance
Colonel Paul Schroderstein briefly resuscitated the Danish rocket program in
1813, and Captain D. W. Silferstrope tried again in 1829, but Denmark
eventually joined the other Continental powers in ultimately rejecting the
weapons until the twentieth century.
