Standing Well Back
1810-1820

The Mystery of Dundonald’s Destroyer, a WMD developed in 1811.

This is an interesting tale. Hold on as a guide you through it.

Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald was a remarkable man.   A naval hero, as a young captain he had marvelous adventures fighting the French on the high seas. The French nicknamed him “Le Loup des Mers” – the Wolf of the Seas.  He is said to be, in part, an inspiration for Jack Aubrey, indeed many of the stories from Cochrane’s naval exploits are rehearsed in the novels of Patrick O’Brian.

As a young officer his career was not without aspects that cause, and caused, raised eyebrows – he was court martialled for showing disrespect to a senior lieutenant, and reprimanded.   But his naval career was generally exceptional, showing daring and gallantry in action.  During his time in command of HMS Speedy (with a mere 14 guns)  he captured or destroyed 53 enemy ships.  One of his exploits was his seizure and copying of French code books, leaving the originals behind so that the French would think they were uncompromised. When he captured the Spanish ship El Gamo, in 1801, he personally led the boarding party of 53 which consisted every man of his own ship, bar one, the surgeon, and took 319 Spaniards aboard the El Gamo prisoner. The El Gamo had seven times the firepower of the Speedy.  As the hand to hand battle was being fought fiercely and in the balance, Cochrane called over to the surgeon (the sole man left behind) and called for him to send  “the rest of the crew to join the fight”, so disheartening the Spanish.

After a short political career, he was convicted of stock fraud, dismissed from the Navy, lost his knighthood, humiliated in public and expelled from parliament (but then re-elected), standing on a ticket of parliamentary reform.  He was eventually pardoned in 1832 after a change in government. He was restored to the Navy list in the rank of rear-admiral.

In the intervening period before he was pardoned, he continued an adventurous life. Leaving England in disgrace he became a Chilean citizen and became a Vice Admiral of the Chilean Navy, conducting spectacular naval operations from his frigate the “O’Higgins” against the Spanish.

He then left Chile in a fit of pique and enrolled in the Brazilian navy ( I said you had to hang on and I haven’t even got to the interesting bits yet!) . He took command of the Brazilian flagship and fought the Portuguese, and fought them hard. In one episode he chased the entire Portuguese fleet across the Atlantic with just one ship.  He then fell out with the Brazilians and left with his pockets full….

He then joined the Greek Navy and fought the Ottoman empire, for once, with little positive effect.    His wiki entry is worth a detailed read.

Now, my interest in Cochrane, beyond his adventures, was in the development of certain weapons technologies. He invented numerous devices and systems to aid naval warfare and in other areas too. He worked with Brunel on tunneling systems and with Stevenson on steam engines.  One of his technologies was an “explosion ship” (see earlier posts). Explosion ships or “Infernals or “Machine ships” were not new but Cochrane made use of them to his own design in his attack on the French ships at Aix Roads in 1809

In 1811 he developed a mysterious weapon which became known as “Dundonald’s Destroyer”. He submitted a secret report detailing the technology in 1812 to the prince regent. This secret weapon system was demonstrated to the government on more than one occasion. On each occasion the reports are that the government reviews (whose panel included other weapons developers such as Congreve, the rocket developer)  were horrified with its effectiveness but declined to acquire the weapon system, it being beyond the sensibility that any person could use it against another, or as they described it “too horrible for humanity”. They demanded that its mystery remained secret. Even 100 years later, in 1914, as Britain faced the German empire there were calls to unveil and field this mysterious system.  There is a suggestion that a German butler stole the papers detailing the plans from the Cochrane family and passed them to the Germans in 1914.  Cochrane described the system as follows:

“The infallible means of securing at one blow our maritime superiority and of thereafter maintaining it in perpetuity,” that “no power on earth could stand against it,” that it could be used by the weakest nation against the strongest, and that its construction was “so simple that the most ignorant minds could readily master its mechanism.”

Some historians suggested in the early 1900s that the device could have been some form of focused beam of sunlight using lenses and mirrors, which frankly I don’t find credible.  Others point towards Cochrane’s experiments with “smoke ships”. Cochrane, as we know used fire ships to cause arson and panic in an opposition fleet, and machine ships to detonate amongst them.  He also used smoke ships loaded with burning sulphur and charcoal which caused thick smoke that disguised the movements of his own ships.  The suggestion is that he realised that the choking effect of the sulphur dioxide produced a chemical effect on those exposed to it that turned it into a chemical weapon.  It seems the “Destroyer” was an improved version of the smoke ship, and perhaps associated with improved “machine ships” that exploded.  There is some mention of machine ships being tilted at an angle to project massive explosive effect in a single direction being used in conjunction with hulks loaded with charcoal and sulphur.

In the Crimean War, Cochrane again proposed the use of explosion ships and ”stink vessels”  against the Russians at Sebastopol and in the Baltic.  The eminent scientist Michael Faraday was consulted with regard to the potential effects of the burning of 400 tons of sulphur (which gives us an indication of the scale of Cochrane’s plans), so it is clear the ideas were seriously considered some 40 years after Cochrane made the initial suggestion.

It’s apparent that “Dundonald’s Destroyer” was some form of Weapon of Mass Destruction.  I note that Cochrane claims that it could be used on land or at sea…. Cochrane himself died, penniless in 1860.

Ship-Borne IEDs

Big IEDs in Ships

As promised, a quick “connections’ commentary on some pretty remarkable IEDs on ships and boats in history.

“Fireships” in terms of boats and ships loaded with incendiary material go back in history – I have found reference to them as far back as 413 BC.  With the invention of gunpowder, fireships occasionally contained gunpowder. Sometimes in massive quantities.  In an earlier blog here, I wrote about the “hellburners”,  two explosively laden fireships used by the Dutch defenders of Antwerp in 1584 against the invading Spanish – one of these the “Hoop” (Hope) detonated against a temporary Spanish bridge, killing 800 – 1000 soldiers. If this is true, it is still probably the most lethal single IED in history. I have now found a diagram purporting to the the clockwork timing mechanisms of the device manufacturer by Bory. The Hellburner itself was designed by the Italian Giambelli, who possibly at the time (and certainly later) was an agent of the British.

References I have found recently suggest that Giambelli mounted a series of earlier attacks , floating explosive objects down the tidal river, with limited success. These IEDs were generally floating objects and rafts which carried barrels of gunpowder on a burning fuse.

After these earlier attacks failed Giambelli “thought big” and amidst a fleet of regular fire vessels sailed two explosive vessels (the “Hoop” and the “Fortune”) down the tide towards the target bridge. My earlier post has more details.  The “Fortune” had a burning fuse (which I have also fund an description of, but it is too complex to post details here).

The Hellburner incident and the use of explosive ships (described by the Italians as “Maschina Infernale”, and by the British as “Machine Vessels” became well known among the navies of Europe for several hundred years.

Just over a hundred years later in 1693 the British Navy led by Admiral Benbow used a ship, imaginatively named the Vesuvius, laden with 300 tons of explosives, (other sources say 20,000 pounds of gunpowder) during an attack on the French port of St Malo. The vessel was sailed in by a Captain Philips. The ship did not quite reach its target, became stuck on a rock and exploded “blowing the roofs of half the town”. But causing little loss of life.  The capstan of the “machine vessel” was thrown several hundred yards and landed on an Inn destroying it.


Machine ship “Vesuvius”, 1693

The following year in a raid on Dieppe, again led by Benbow a machine vessel was sent in to the port to destroy it. The ship, skippered by a Capt Dunbar was placed again the quay – and the crew and Capt Dunbar left it quickly. Unfortunately the fuze went out – but Dunbar re-boarded the vessel, re–lit the fuze, and evacuated a second time.


The Dieppe Raid, 1694

Similar machine vessel attacks were mounted on Dunkirk in the same year.

(Note: There were a number of vessels developed in parallel at the time , known as “bomb vessels” but these should not be confused with machine vessels. Bomb vessels were essentially ships built to mount and fire mortars.  To confuse matters the Vesuvius was a bomb vessel converted to a machine vessel)

A little over 100 years later in 1809 Captain (later Admiral ) Cochrane used an explosively laden ship in the Battle of the Basque Roads on the Biscay Atlantic coast of France.  Cochrane used two explosive ships and twenty-one fire ships to attack the French fleet moored off Ile d’Aix.  Here’s Captain Cochrane’s description (who personally set the fuses on one explosion vessel himself)

 “To our consternation, the fuses, which had been constructed to burn fifteen minutes, lasted little more than half that time, when the vessel blew up, filling the air with shells, grenades, and rockets; whilst the downward and lateral force of the explosion raised a solitary mountain of water, from the breaking of which in all directions our little boat narrowly escaped being swamped. The explosion-vessel did her work well, the effect constituting one of the grandest artificial spectacles imaginable. For a moment, the sky was red with the lurid glare arising from the simultaneous ignition of fifteen hundred barrels of powder. On this gigantic flash subsiding, the air seemed alive with shells, grenades, rockets, and masses of timber, the wreck of the shattered vessel. The sea was convulsed as by an earthquake, rising, as has been said, in a huge wave, on whose crest our boat was lifted like a cork, and as suddenly dropped into a vast trough, out of which as it closed upon us with the rush of a whirlpool, none expected to emerge. In a few minutes nothing but a heavy rolling sea had to be encountered, all having again become silence and darkness.”

Cochrane went on , in 1812, to design even bigger machine vessels, but never got the political support needed to build or employ them. His 1812 designs used a hulk, rather than a rigged vessel.

“The decks would be removed, and an inner shell would be constructed of heavy timbers and braced strongly to the hull. In the bottom of the shell would be laid a layer of clay, into which obsolete ordnance and metal scrap were embedded. The “charge,” in the form of a thick layer of powder, would next be placed, and above that would be laid rows and rows of shells and animal carcasses.   The explosion ship would then be towed into place at an appropriate distance from anchored enemy ships, heeled to a correct angle by means of an adjustment in the ballast loaded in the spaces running along each side of the hulk between the inner and outer hulls, and anchored securely. When detonated, the immense mortar would blast its lethal load in a lofty arc, causing it to spread out over a wide area and to fall on the enemy in a deadly torrent. Experiments conducted with models in the Mediterranean, during his layoff, convinced Cochrane that three explosion ships, properly handled, could saturate a half-mile-square area with 6,000 missiles–enough destructive force to cripple any French squadron even if it lay within an enclosed anchorage.”

In 1864, during the American Civil war an explosively laden ship, the USS Louisiana was used to attack a Confederate fort, Fort Fisher, guarding Wilmington, North Carolina.  The ship was meant to be run aground adjacent to the fort walls and then detonated.  The ship was carrying “215 tons of explosives”. The attack failed as the Louisiana detonated too far away from the fort walls to cause damage.

Here’s a diagam of the ship. Note the huge amount of explosives. I have obtained a detailed description of the numerous initiation systems and fuzes but it is too complex to post here easily.  Suffice to say there were 5 independent firing systems.


USS Louisiana, 1864

Just over a fifty years later the Zeebrugge raid of 1918 saw the British Royal Navy again use an explosive vessel, this time the submarine C-3, under Lt Cdr Sandford. Sandford was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross.

“This officer was in command of submarine C3, and most skillfully placed that vessel in between the piles of the viaduct before lighting his fuse and abandoning her. He eagerly undertook this hazardous enterprise, although well aware (as were all his crew) that if the means of rescue failed and he or any of his crew were in the water at the moment of the explosion, they would be killed outright by the force of such explosion. Yet Lieutenant Sandford disdained to use the gyro steering which would have enabled him and his crew to abandon the submarine at a safe distance, and preferred to make sure, as far as was humanly possible, of the accomplishment of his duty.” After pushing the submarine under the piles of the viaduct and setting the fuse, he and his companions** found that the propeller of their launch was broken, and they had to resort to oars and to row desperately hard against the strong current to get a hundred yards away before the charge exploded. They had a wonderful escape from being killed by the falling debris.


Damage caused by the detonation of the C-3 – Zeebrugge 1918

The final one from this series is Operation Chariot, aka “the Greatest Raid”, the British Navy and commando raid on St Nazaire in 1942.  I won’t repeat the story, other than provide this link to the Wikipedia article – not many Wikipedia articles make the hairs of my neck stand up, but this one does. In this raid, HMS Cambeltown was converted into a massive IED and rammed into the docks in St Nazaire to prevent their use by the German Battleship Tirpitz.


HMS Campbeltown rammed onto the dock gates in St Nazaire, before she exploded. 1942.

One big concept – massive IEDs in ships, woven through history.

I have much more to post on historical naval IEDs. Be patient!

19th Century

US Made “Trojan Horse” IED Used Against the British in 1813

Another interesting booby trap IED set by our American cousins against the Brits:

The United States Congress decided to encourage private citizens to get involved in the war effort. In March 1813, they passed legislation encouraging the development of weapons and tactics designed to disrupt the blockade. John Scudder, Jr., a New York businessman, soon rose to the challenge. He outfitted a schooner named “Eagle” with kegs of gunpowder, sulfur, turpentine, and two flintlock firing devices, which were attached to two barrels of flour on deck. If either barrel were to be moved, the entire vessel would be detonated. The boat was filled with a standard load of provisions, then sailed toward the mouth of the Sound.  It arrived off Millstone Point on June 25, 1813, and dropped anchor. The crew headed for shore as a British boarding party approached, then fired on the boat.  The boarding party, to save themselves and the schooner, cut the anchor line and sailed back toward safety. The Americans had planned on this, assuming that the British navy would tie the prize to HMS Ramillies. Instead, the Eagle was tied to another recently captured vessel. That afternoon, one of the flour barrels was moved, causing a massive explosion that destroyed both the Eagle and the boat it was tied to, killing a second lieutenant and ten British sailors in the process.

What is it about these New Yorkers?  : – )

 

Command IED

Early history of command wire electrically initiated IEDs

In some of my previous blogs I wrote about the first command wire IEDs occurring in the US Civil War, then had to correct myself as I found earlier examples in the Crimean war and then again earlier incidences by both Immanuel Nobel and Samuel Colt.

Well, I keep finding other perhaps earlier references as I dig into this and follow this “historical alley” and it’s really quite interesting and clearly things go back further in time than I had appreciated.  Here’s some extracts from what I’ve been digging up.

It starts with some further exploration into the efforts of Samuel Colt, the American industrialist and arms inventor. Separate from his efforts developing small arms, Colt for many years attempted to get the US government interested in a system for defending the US coastline which he referred to as his “Submarine Battery” which were essentially water-borne command initiated sea mines.  I attempted to try and find the inspiration for Colt’s efforts and the science on which he based his submarine munition technology.

I have in earlier blogs discussed the parallel work of Immanuel Nobel (father of Alfred Nobel) who developed command initiated sea mines for the Russian Navy at about the same time. It would appear that another 19th century military industrialist, this time the German Werner von Siemens was also developing very similar technologies perhaps a few years later in 1848, compared to Colt and Nobel who worked on their versions in the early part of the same decade. What is unclear is if these three entrepreneurial military technology developers were aware of each other’s developments.  Siemens’s devices were used to protect Kiel from Danish naval attacks in 1848.

But pertinent to the subject of electrical initiation of IEDs is a letter written by Benjamin Franklin in 1751 to Mr Peter Collinson of the Royal Academy in England which states

I have not hear’d, that any of your European Electricians have hitherto been able to fire gunpowder by the Electric Flame. We do it here in this Manner.

A small Cartridge is filled with Dry powder, hard rammed, so as to bruise some of the Grains. Two pointed Wires are then thrust In, one at Each End, the points approaching each other in the Middle of the Cartridge, till within the distance of  half an Inch: Then the Cartridge being placed in the Circle (circuit), when the Four Jars (galvanic cells) are discharged the electric Flame leaping from the point of one Wire to the point of the other, within the Cartridge, among the powder, fires It, and the explosion of the powder is at the same Instant with the crack of the Discharge

I wonder if we can call this the first electrically initiated IED? Albeit manufactured with pure science in mind rather than as a weapon.

Inspired directly by Franklin, the Italian Allessandro Volta wrote to a colleague in 1777 describing how he had fired muskets, pistols and an under-water mine by means of his electrical piles. I suspect this was the first electrically initiated IED actually intended as a weapon.

Volta’s Italian compatriot, working on a telegraph, Tiberius Cavallo then took a step further in 1782 in the following manner

The attempts recently made to convey intelligence from one place to another at a great distance, with the utmost quickness, have induced me to publish the following experiments, which I made some years ago. The object for which those experiments were performed, was to fire gun-powder, or other combustible matter, from a great distance, by means of electricity. At first I made a circuit with a very long brass wire, the two ends of which returned to the same place, whilst the middle of the wire stood at a great distance. In this middle an interruption was made, in which a cartridge of gunpowder mixed with steel filings was placed. Then, by applying a charged Leyden phial to the two extremities of the wire, (viz. by touching one wire with the knob of the phial, whilst the other was connected with the outside coating) the cartridge was fired. In this manner I could fire gunpowder from the distance of three hundred feet and upwards.

I think this may effectively be the first command wire initiated IED.

The next issue to be dealt with was waterproofing electrical cable and a variety of attempts were made using a range of substances including india rubber, varnish and tarred hemp. The Russians appear on the scene. Baron Schilling Von Canstadt was a Russian diplomat in Bavaria who took great interest in scientific developments. On his return to St Petersburg in 1812 and driven by war with France, Schilling Von Canstadt developed electrically initiated charges that could be fired across a river, the cable running through the water, with a carbon arc initiator. These were demonstrated in 1812 but do not appear to have been adopted by the Russian Army. Later after the Russians entered Paris after Napoleon’s defeat he undertook a number of similar experiments crossing the Seine.   Here’s a description of him demonstrating a command wire IED to Tsar Alexander I

Once Baron Schilling had the honor to present a wire to the Emperor in his tent. He begged his Majesty to touch it with another wire, whilst looking through the door of the tent in the direction of a very far distant mine. A cloud of smoke rose from this exploding mine at the moment the Emperor, with his hands, made the contact. This caused great surprise, and provoked expressions of satisfaction and applause.

His successor, Tsar Nicholas I was fortunate to escape serious injury in 1837 when an electrically initiated charge was used on a demonstration to destroy a bridge but the demonstration went wrong and the charge detonated prematurely or with larger effect than expected.

The next on the scene were the British. Colonel Pasley of the Royal Engineers was inspired by a newspaper report of the accident in Russia and working with the electrical scientist Wheatstone developed insulated cables and platinum filament exploding detonators around 1839.

Also in the 1830s, American scientist Robert Hare developed “galvanic techniques” for quarry blasting.

Enough for now – some time in the future I’ll return to Colt’s submarine battery, but will state here that as a 15 year old boy in 1829 it appears he had his first success in initiating an explosive charge under water.

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