Congreve Rocket

Origins

Rockets had been used in war in China and Korea for centuries — the Korean Hwacha fired them in salvoes — but it was in India that the British met them in earnest. The armies of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore used iron-cased rockets in large numbers during the Anglo-Mysore Wars of the late eighteenth century, with painful results for British troops, and after the fall of Seringapatam in 1799 examples were sent to England. William Congreve, son of the comptroller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich, began experimenting in 1804, spending his own money on improved gunpowder and cases, and within two years he had rockets that could fly about two miles.

Design & Construction

A Congreve rocket is a sheet-iron case packed with a gunpowder propellant, topped with a warhead that could be a solid shot, an explosive shell, case shot or an incendiary "carcass," and guided by a long wooden stick. On early models the stick was fixed to the side of the case; from 1815 it was screwed into the center of the base, which improved stability. Rockets came in many sizes; the 32-pounder, with a stick about fifteen feet long, was the most common for bombardment, and smaller 6- and 12-pounders were used in the field. They were fired from simple frames, ladders or troughs, from ships' boats, or even laid on the ground, and they needed no heavy guns or carriages. Their great weakness was accuracy: rockets could swerve, turn back, or skip wildly along the ground.

Combat Use

Rockets were first used against the French invasion port of Boulogne in 1806, and in 1807 thousands — often put at about 25,000 — were fired during the bombardment of Copenhagen, helping to set much of the city ablaze. A Rocket Brigade of the Royal Horse Artillery fought at Leipzig in 1813, and a rocket troop was present at the Battle of Waterloo. In the War of 1812, rockets helped rout American militia at Bladensburg in 1814, before the burning of Washington, and in September of that year the rocket ship HMS Erebus fired them during the bombardment of Fort McHenry at Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key watched "the rockets' red glare" and wrote the words that became the American national anthem. Like the Trebuchet before it, the rocket was above all a weapon against towns and fortifications.

Legacy

Congreve rockets stayed in British service until the 1860s, when William Hale's spin-stabilized rocket, which needed no stick, replaced them; both were then overtaken by rifled artillery. Rockets were adopted by many other armies, including Austria, which formed a large rocket corps. The Congreve rocket's lasting legacy is as an ancestor of modern military rocketry, and in American memory through the anthem. Surviving rockets and rocket cases are rare and are held by museums including the Royal Artillery and Smithsonian collections.