Standing Well Back
19th Century

When EOD Innovation Goes Wrong

Here’s the interesting tale, from 1879 about a the disposal of explosives that went tragically wrong, despite the method being developed by one of the top explosive scientists in the country.  At some point during the year, 12,000 detonators were imported illegally into England.  They had been labeled “percussion caps”. For a while they were put in storage and after some discussion were sent for disposal, the procedure to be used being an innovative one that perhaps had not been tried fully and limits set.

Here’s an extract from a report on the matter:

Useful lesson here – what might work theoretically as a scientific, chemical disposal method for one detonator doesn’t necessarily apply to a larger quantity. Having said that I’d say the method was a bit weird at the most perfect of times.  The report above was extracted from the annual report (1879) of the Chief Inspector of Explosives, Major Majendie – an absolute treasure trove of information about the management of explosives, and the investigation of explosive incidents at this time in history. The reports, by Major Majendie and his co-inspector Major Ford, assisted by Dr DuPre are professional, technically sound and beautifully written.   It also shows that the UK MOD were assisting the police in the recovery and disposal of explosives all the way back then – something 11 EOD Regiment are involved in today – modern Ammunition Technicians being direct descendants of the Woolwich Royal Laboratory staff.

19th Century

Update – Majendie and the “Crime of the Century” bomb

A few years ago I wrote a blog post about an IED that exploded prematurely at Bremerhaven docks on 11 December 1875. That post is at this link here – Crime of the Century.  Please re-read that report before reading on here.   At the time I had somewhat incomplete information but now I have found more material including a report, written soon after the incident by Col (then Major) Majendie that has come into my hands and adds some fascinating detail.  This is good Weapons Technical Intelligence from our esteemed Colonel Majendie. Majendie was the lead explosive expert in the Home Office and the father of modern British EOD and IED incident investigation. He had access to German police reports suggesting the following:

  1. The explosive used was a Nitro-glycerine based dynamite, called “Lithofracteur” – nitro-glycerine mixed into kieselguhr, sawdust, charcoal and bran . This, Thomas (aka, Keith, aka Garcie) had purchased in March 1875 .
  2. Keith had actually attempted to blow up cargo ships on one or two previous translatlantic crossings, but the initiation mechanism had failed. It seems likely that the Bremerhaven incident was the second or third attempt.
  3. The large crate that the device was hidden in was dropped but it probably wasn’t the impact of the drop on the sensitive dynamite to explode that caused the explosion.
  4. The complex timing and initiation contraption, designed by Keith but manufactured by German clock engineers , was not quite manufactured as per the instructions – because Keith’s “cover story” to the manufacturers provided a set of circumstances that didn’t quite make sense. Part of the contraption had levers which caused the action on the detonator at the right time.  These levers were held in place with springs.  The design included a spring detent to hold the levers in place but because Keith had told the  manufacturers that the levers were to cut silk threads while fitted to a bench in a factory, the manufacturers saw no need for this detent and left the spring out.
  5. Thus, the levers were able to move under external force on the whole mechanism. The force of the crate dropping on the stone dockside was not enough to cause the explosive to function – this form of dynamite is not that sensitive in most cases. But the assessment is that the force was enough to overcome the striker springs in the timed initiation mechanism even though it wasn’t  technically  “armed” at that point.
  6. So the premature explosion of the IED occurred because the perpetrator was so secretive about the use of the mechanism that the efficient German engineers manufacturing it thought it was a redundant part so omitted it without telling Keith.

Majendie also reports on the complex insurance negotiations that Keith engaged in with the insurers Baring Brothers and others regarding the insurance of the box, which was his ultimate purpose to defraud.  The report by Majendie then suggests a deeper engagement in the investigation. Separate from the German police reports furnished by the British consul in Bremherhaven, it appears that Majendie and his scientific adviser Dr Dupre obtained a diagram based on a drawing by the clockwork engineer Fuchs of the timing and initiation mechanism.   I think this was a copy of the diagram shown in this excellent report. This report even includes a picture of replica of the mechanism made by the original maker.  Fuchs, the clock engineer made a bit of hay after the explosion and made duplicates of his clockwork mechanism and sold them to a number of museums. There is a vagueness about the source of this diagram in Majendie’s report which I find suspicious and deliberate.   Furthermore it is clear that there was some form of very rapid international investigation which Majendie refers to obliquely. Although Majendie doesn’t mention it, I think this will have been an international investigation undertaken by the famous Pinkerton’s agency, probably at the behest of the insurance companies involved.  Majendie’s report also suggests to me that Dr Dupre, the scientist, was working perhaps secretly on a mission Germany to gather more intelligence on the operation. It certainly appears he met Fuchs, the clockmaker. A secret IED intelligence operation, no less. Certainly Majendie seems to have full details of negotiations the perpetrator had with insurers so I suspect he was provided with a copy of the Pinkerton report on their investigation.

It is suggested that Thomas/Keith may have had a role in other curious incidents and missing ships, perhaps in a series of insurance frauds.  This appears to have worried Majendie who undertook investigations of other cargoes that may have been sent by “Keith” including the investigation of the cargo on the ship “Salier” docked in Southampton.  Majendie also conducted quite a range of experiments on the sensitivity of lithofracteur – but also complains of the salacious reports in the press which exaggerate the threats from explosives- comments from public figures who should know better, exacerbating his challenges in an unwanted manner and misunderstanding, misrepresenting or having no bearing on the technical issues. Plus ca change as Dr Dupre would say.

Here’s a pic of the bodies being removed from the dockside in Bremerhaven after the explosion:

The lessons from this incident, still today, after over 150 years are:

a. International cooperation on IED investigation is not new, and pays dividends.
b. The implicit secrecy of planning and preparing IEDs leads to unexpected pressures. These pressures often cause the operation to fail, or provide the perpetrator with unwanted or unexpected changes to the operation. A careful WTI investigator will consider these pressures in his analysis.
c. The obvious cause of an explosion isn’t always the case. Only careful examination of the components, or in this case the component diagram revealed the full nature of why it occurred when it occurred.
d. Close partnership between lead investigators and scientific advisers is essential as is the ability to carry out experiments to test theories.
e. IED incident investigations were pretty good 150 years ago.

Accidental Explosions

Echoes of the Past – Beirut Explosion and Erith, 1864

I am fortunate to have “inherited” an archive of historical material from “IJ” which I am slowly cataloguing. I can’t help but to dive in on some of the historical documents which although perhaps not connected with IEDs and EOD have a broader historical interest in those interested in explosives.  One particular set of documents relate to the latter part of the 1800s when the UK was undergoing a period of regulatory development of controls on the production and storage of explosives. Until then it appears that safety and good practice were unregulated and the industrial expansion of the explosives industry  was little constrained, and as a result a number of accidents occurred.  This led to investigations by military officers (first Lt Col Boxer RE in 1864, and later by 1874, Major (later Colonel) Majendie RA.  I have often mentioned Colonel Majendie in earlier posts as he was really the first “formal” practitioner of both Improvised Explosive Device Disposal and what is now called Weapons Technical intelligence in relation to IEDs.

As I looked at the early reports by Col Boxer and Maj Majendie I was struck by some similarities in a major explosion that occurred in Erith and the recent explosion in Beirut.  I propose no particular comment here on the Beirut explosion other to say that I was disappointed at the volume of technically illiterate comments in the news media.  But it is interesting to see how two events in 1864 caused the establishment of suitable regulatory control. The two events, which I’ll discuss below, and a number of other explosions in the latter part of the 1800s heightened public and government awareness of the safety issues in the manufacture and storage of explosives, and the appointment of Majendie as the lead government authority on the matter of explosives also provided him, inadvertently but happily, with the powers to investigate IEDs.

The first incident in 1864 was the explosion of the “Lottie Sleigh” a sailing barque carrying 11 tonnes of gunpowder on the River Mersey on 15 January 1864. A sailor aboard knocked over a lamp causing a fire. All the crew “baled out” and were picked up by a ferry. Shortly afterwards the unmanned vessel exploded. No-one was killed but the damage on both sides of the Mersey was significant. Thousands of windows were broken and doors were blown open in both Birkenhead and Liverpool and most of the gas lamps in the streets of Liverpool were “blown out”.  The explosion was heard 40 miles away.  Subsequently insurance companies were involved in complex process to assess liability.  Here’s a pic of the vessel exploding:

Later that year, on October 1st two storage warehouses containing a total of 50 tonnes of gunpowder exploded at Erith on the Southern Bank of the Thames, not far from Woolwich. No cause of the explosion has ever been established.  The explosion was felt 50 miles away. The store was adjacent, like in Beirut, to some docks,

This quote helps us understand the significant devastation:

Everything within its reach was annihilated. Man and matter perished together, shivered into a thousand fragments and whirled into space. People know there used to be a magazine in the Erith marshes, but there is now only a yawning crater there. The very ruins are lost. A visitor to the spot went to look for a cottage which he
remembered ; it had been ” swept entirely away, as with a broom.” Every witness whose evidence could have thrown light on the catastrophe has been hurried out of the world by that tremendous thunder- clap. Those immediately concerned can hardly be returned as killed-they are “missing”-that is to say, their very bodies have disappeared.

Property was damaged 20 miles away but only 10 people died.

These two explosions caught the imagination of the public and communities adjunct to “powder stores” up and down the country. There seems to have been a campaign by many of them to write to the Home Secretary to request oversight of the storage of explosives, and so Lt Col Boxer RE was tasked with inspecting many of these sites up and down the country. In effect this became the first Report of the Chief Inspector of Explosives, a report which became annual under Major Majendie 10 years later and which provide today a treasure trove of historical research. I have copies now from 1864 and then from 1874 till recent reports.

The Erith explosion has a number parallels with the Beirut explosion. Lessons can still be learned 150 years later.  Alas, this was not the last explosion in this vicinity. There was an explosion at Woolwich in 1883, and another in 1907. In World War One (1917) there was a massive explosion of 50 tons of TNT in Silvertown docks on the North bank of the Thames nearby.  Weirdly there was another explosion at a factory in Erith 4 months ago.

I have somewhere a catalogue of such accidental explosions in history, a remarkable number, which perhaps I’ll pull together in blog post – going back hundreds of years.  Bottom line – every explosive store should be sited and managed on the presumption that it will explode.  Major Majendie’s report of 1874 is a fantastic “tour de force” of the explosives industry of the time and the needs of detailed explosive regulations – I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in explosive storage.

 

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