From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Congreve rocket from Congreve's original work

The Congreve Rocket was a British weapon designed by William Congreve in 1804.

The British were greatly impressed by the Mysorean rockets used by Tipu Sultan's army made from iron tubes. Tipu Sultan championed the use of mass attacks with rocket brigades in the army. The effect of these weapons on the British during the Third and Fourth Mysore Wars was sufficiently impressive to inspire William Congreve to develop Congreve rockets. Several of them were sent to England, and from 1801, William Congreve, son of the Comptroller of the Royal Woolwich Arsenal, London, after thoroughly examining the Indian specimens, set on a vigorous research and development programme at the Arsenal's laboratory. Congreve prepared a new propellant mixture, and developed a rocket motor with a strong iron tube with conical nose, weighing about 14.5 kg. He also published three books on rocketry.

The rocket was made up of an iron case of black powder for propulsion and either an explosive or incendiary "cylindro-conoidal" head. The warheads were attached to wooden guide poles and were launched in pairs from half troughs on simple metal A-frames. The original rocket design had the guide pole side-mounted on the warhead, this was improved in 1815 with a base plate with a threaded hole. They could be fired up to two miles (3 km)—the range being set by the degree of elevation of the launching frame—although at any range they were fairly inaccurate and had a tendency for premature explosion. They were as much a psychological weapon as a physical one, for they were rarely or never used except alongside other types of artillery. Congreve designed several different warhead sizes from 3 to 24 pounds (1 to 10 kg). The 24 pound (10 kg) type with a fifteen foot (5 m) guide pole was the most widely used variant.

The weapon remained in use until the 1850s, when it was superseded by the improved spinning design of William Hale. In the 1870s the rockets were adopted to carry rescue lines to vessels in distress superseding the mortar of Captain Manby and rockets that had been in use since the 1830s.

It was the use of Congreve rockets by the British in the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the U.S. in 1814 which gave the line referring to the "rockets' red glare" in The Star-Spangled Banner.

Congreve rockets are also a heavy artillery unit unique to the British in the games Age of Empires III and Imperial Glory.

The Congreve System was, fictionally, trialed by Richard Sharpe using a Rocket Troop under Lieutenant Gilliland in Sharpe's Enemy and also appearing briefly in Sharpe's Waterloo.