So they died out until the V-2 rockets and bazookas of a century later. They were finally replaced with heavy artillery as ships became ironclad. The English also tried to take Baltimore, but they failed when their rockets couldn't take out Fort McHenry, guarding the city. Our most powerful image from that event is Dolley Madison reentering the burning White House to save its art treasures. It was Congreve's rockets that burned Washington in 1814. From then on, English rockets played an important part in war against the French.īut, in the War of 1812, England turned the full fury of Congreve's rockets on us - from Bangor, Maine, all the way to New Orleans. He developed his own version of those Indian war rockets.Īfter failed tests against French shore installations, Congreve managed to burn most of the city of Copenhagen - a hapless bystander in the Napoleonic Wars. That especially suited them to use at sea. In 1804 he realized that rockets exert no reactive force - none of the "kick" of a cannon. And it included far more practical stuff than ballooning to the moon.īut those Indian rockets are what captivated Congreve. By the age of 28 he published a whole folio of inventions. When he was 13, he proposed to travel to the moon in one of the new French balloons. His father, a veteran of the American Revolution, had founded, and now ran, the Arsenal. William Congreve was a bright kid who grew up in the late 1700s amid English ordnance at Woolwich Arsenal and Indian rockets in the Royal Artillery Museum. Those troops savaged invading English cavalry. They used 6 to 12-pound rockets with a range of a mile or so. By the 18th century, rocket troops were an important part of most Indian armies. The 16th-century Mogul emperor Akbar used military rockets. India also had the best Asian supplies of saltpeter for making powder. India's landscape of small hills and stony river beds made it hard to move artillery around. Rockets soon spread to Europe and India, but their only tactical importance was in India. The Chinese invented war rockets 1000 or so years ago. Military rockets have had two brief periods of importance in the West: since WW-II, and 50 years of Congreve rockets. They were a new weapon of war, with a range of about three miles. They tell about an attack of 32-pound English Congreve rockets on our Fort McHenry in 1814. "The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air" - words set to an old English drinking song. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. Today, let's talk about English rockets in the War of 1812.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |