Smith's Costumes: Week Twenty-Two
Welcome back to our exploration of Charles Hamilton Smith's Costumes of the Army of the British Empire, in which we'll be looking at a different print every week of the year.
This week we're looking at the "Royal Artillery, Mounted Rockett Corps."
Sir William Congreve, comptroller of the Woolwich Laboratory, designed eponymous rockets. [1,2] These were made of an iron case containing black powder, ignited via a fuse, and then attached to wooden guide poles to stabilize their flight. [3] They were launched in pairs from half troughs on simple metal A-frames. [3] Two fuses were lit: one ignited the powder in the case to create thrust, while the other ran to ignite the warhead at the top. [3] The rockets came in several different sizes: 12, 18, and 24 pounders. [1]
The Duke of Wellington was not impressed by these rockets. [1] He had first come across rockets in India, in use by the Tipoo, where they had failed to save the ruler of Seringapatam from defeat. [2,244] Congreve rockets were also tested in the Peninsular War. [2, 244] In Spain, General Graham sent the Duke a message on 28 December 1810 that the new Congreve Rockets were no good. [2, 244] They had been used in an attempt to shell the enemy's flotilla, but although the rockets hit home, the boats sustained no injury. [2, 244] They were tested again in early 1814, this time against cavalry. It was agreed that they would have terrified the horses-- if only they had gone near them. [2, 340]
During the Waterloo campaign, Congreve rockets belonged to the troop of Major Edward Whinyates. [2, 437] Wellington attempted to forbid Whinyates to take such poor substitutes for guns with him, but one of his superiors went to Wellington to plead his case.
"It will break poor Whinyates's heart to lose his rockets."
"Damn his heart, sir; let my order be obeyed."
Wellington did thereafter relent and allowed Whinyates to bring 800 rockets to Quatre Bras. [2, 437]
They were allowed to attempt to prove themselves as part of the cavalry/artillery screening which covered the retreat to Waterloo. [2,437] They proved little. The first rocket demolished a French gun and its crew, but all the rest either shot vertically into the air or wriggled sideways. [2, 440] One turned right about and began chasing Captain Mercer up the Brussels road (unsurprisingly, Mercer agreed with Wellington's view of rockets). [2, 440]
The rockets were used to little effect at Waterloo as well. They helped cover the heavy cavalry's retreat after their disastrous charge. [2, 464] However, one observer explained, "most of them, on arriving about the middle of the ascent, took a vertical direction, while 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 the fire of the enemy throughout the day." [1]
Ineffective they may have been, but they did become immortal. Congreve Rockets were fired from a British ship upon Fort McHenry during the war of 1812, and it was their red glare Francis Scott Key wrote about in his poem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." [3]
The Royal Artillery wore dark blue coats with red facings. The trousers here are a bit odd. It looks like he's wearing grey pantaloons or trousers with piping, then brownish gaiters over, presumably, boots. Except the piping goes from waist to boot, so, perhaps his pants are two-colored? As for the flag, it's actually four sticks that look attached together which were the guide sticks for light rockets that would have been in their saddle bags. These sticks made them appear as lancers from a distance, so much so that one troop commander gave them unofficial lance pennons to help disguise them. [4]
Sources:
[1] https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1950-11-33-24
[2] Longford, Elizabeth. Wellington, The Years of the Sword. Vol. 1, Harper & Row, 1969.
[3]https://www.spacecentre.co.uk/collections/categories/rockets/congreve-rocket/
[4] https://rodwargaming.wordpress.com/horse-musket/napoleonic/napoleonic-artillery-engineers-logistic/
If you'd like to look at the full series of weekly posts exploring Smith's Costumes of the Army of the British Empire, search the tag #CABE Project 2026.
