Napoleonic era rockets

[Grey Roger]

Take a look at this thread on a German rocketry forum:
Raketenmodellbau.org - Forum - 16.10.2015 britische Raketentruppen in Leipzig.....

If you can read German, good; if not, just look at the pretty pictures. It's a re-enactment of the Battle of Leipzig, a.k.a. Battle of the Nations, which took place in 1813. An allied force from Prussia, Russia, Austria and Sweden took on Napoleon's army. Also present was a small British unit trying out Congreve rockets in a land battle for the first time (they'd already been used for naval bombardments, including the one which provides the line "Rockets' red glare" in the American national anthem). So the re-enactment includes some replica Congreve rockets being launched.

If we're going to have rockets in PoTC, that's how they should look.

 

[Bartolomeu o Portugues]

In the San Felipe fort attack, you already have some Portuguese soldiers using rockets...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Isn't that pretty much how they do look in your storyline, @Bartolomeu o Portugues?

 

[Jack Rackham]

If we're going to have rockets in PoTC that's how they should look.

We already have and they don't look like that.
They are sort of hand guns and have some nice efffects if I may say so.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We already have and they don't look like that.
They are sort of hand guns and have some nice efffects if I may say so.

I thought the interface images looked similar to those?

 

[Bartolomeu o Portugues]

They are sort of hand guns

Indeed, it's the main difference (and maybe smaller) but they look similar, I think

 

[Grey Roger]

Take a look at the Bo-hiya, an early Japanese rocket. The Japanese had already been experimenting with rockets similar to Chinese fire arrows, but the Portuguese introduced them to matchlocks in 1543 and the Japanese, as well as using matchlocks in the usual manner, also used them as a means to launch their rockets. The result bears some resemblance to what we get to use at San Felipe - perhaps some Portuguese ship returned to Japan, found out what they'd been doing with their matchlocks, and brought a few back.

Congreve rockets were available in various sizes. As seen in the original article, they were used on land. And as seen in 1812, they were used at sea. This is what a rocket-firing ship looked like (click on the picture for an enlarged version):

 

[Ashinokami]

that's first I see it in naval usage, very interesting! Were rockets used before Napoleonic era in European military? In school we used to learn about this fellow: Kazimierz Siemienowicz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia , seems his treatise on rocket artillery was pretty widespread in his time (late 17th c.).

 

[Grey Roger]

Although there's mention of rockets earlier than that in a European context, I'm not sure if they were used much, if at all, before Napoleonic times. Mysore's big development was to use iron casings for its rockets. Britain, having been on the receiving end of these, took a great interest and William Congreve developed the series of rockets that Britain then used.