Regency Pyrotechnics

Joanna here.

What do Vauxhall, the court of Queen Elizabeth, Cuper's Gardens, (which is described intriguingly as "the scene of low dissipation . . . and the great resort of the profligate of both sexes" — rather like our local mall,) the celebration of the wedding of George III, and Kensington Gardens have in common?

Fireworks.  Big, bright rockets and Catherine wheels and crackers.  Fireworks were the sound and light show of the Eighteenth Century.  The extravaganza that marked all great and festive events.

Sometimes there was music.  You can listen to Handel's Fireworks Music, for instance, here.  I'll admit I was expecting something with more booms in it.

 

“.... fireworks had for her a direct and magical appeal. Their attraction was more complex than that of any other form of art. They had pattern and sequence, colour and sound, brilliance and mobility; they had suspense, surprise, and a faint hint of danger; above all, they had the supreme quality of transience, which puts the keenest edge on beauty.”
Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver

 

Fireworks came out of China, like printing, dim sum and Bruce Lee.  The original fireworks date back to the Ninth Century or so.  They, were firecrackers made of gunpowder, stuffed into thin bamboo shoots.  Oddly enough, the original use of pyrotechnics was not warfare.  All this gunpowder was set off at the new year to scare away evil spirits.  It probably worked.

Knowledge of gunpowder arrived in the Middle East and Europe in the 1200s.  Marco Polo sometimes gets the credit, and why shouldn't he? 

 

“You're much better than fireworks. They're all over in a moment, and you're going to stay for a fortnight. Besides, fireworks are noisy, and they make too much smoke.”
Kate Ross, Cut to the Quick

One of the first mentions of fireworks is in Roger Bacon's Opus Majus. 

"... that children's toy which is made in many diverse parts of the world, a device no bigger than one's thumb. From the violence of that salt called saltpetre, together with sulphur and willow charcoal, combined into a powder, so horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small, with no more than a bit of parchment containing it, that we find the ear assaulted by a noise exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash brighter than the most brilliant lightning."
 
Early English fireworks specialists were — it's not surprising — military gunners.  The same men who used gunpowder to send an iron ball shooting out of a cannon, used that knowledge to create and explode fireworks.  They formed craft guilds across Europe, traveled, exchanged information, and wrote long treatises on the formulas and methods.    

This here is a vast fireworks display over the Thames in 1748 at the Duke of Richmond to celebrate the ending of the War of the Austrian Succession.  This is the shindig for which Handel wrote that music linked above.  

See there in the middle of the Thames?  Those rockets going up and letting off a globe and lights falling out were called 'stars'. 

To make falling stars —
"... the stuffe which is to be put into the Rocket for to flame and give crackes is made of twelve partes of Saltpeeter refind, of Citrine Brimstone nine partes, of grosse gunpowder five partes and 1/4 of a part mingled togeather with your hand."

That mixture was moistened and formed into small pieces, then packed into a ball and wound tightly round with packthread, given a fuse, and placed in the head of a rocket.  When the rocket exploded, the stars would stream down in the air.

One observer said it seemed "as if the sky has opened ... as if all the air in the world is filled with fireworks and all the stars in the heavens are falling to earth ...  a thing truly stupendous and marvelous to behold."

 

"We were ready for the apocalypse and when it didn't come we were very disappointed. So we drank more absinthe and set off fireworks."
Marilyn Manson

 

What our Regency folks would have called 'gun powder', what we might call 'black powder' today, was made from three main ingredients.  There were some other additives, but thee were the Big Three.

Ground charcoal.  The best charcoal, the sort used for fireworks — was made from willow, alder or black dogwood. 

Sulphur, which had to be perfectly clean and free from sulfuric acid. 

And saltpeter. Saltpeter is interesting stuff.  It's mainly potassium nitrate.  The name, sal petrae, 'salt of rock' is because it's found as an incrustation on rocks.  Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century folks mined it in dungheaps and farmyards and caves favored by bats for many years. Or they cultivated it deliberately by composting manure for a year, adding additional urine.  It was the urea in urine that bacteria broke down to the useful nitrates.

I haven't found any Regency reference to the idea that saltpeter suppresses sexual desire.  Either I just haven't found it or they hadn't thought that up yet.

Back to the ingredients for fireworks.
It's somewhat a matter of what they didn't have. Iron filings might be added to make a brighter and more intense flame, but fireworks were white and yellow.  They didn't have color.  It wasn't till the 1830s that folks started adding the metals that give color to fireworks.  All our red, blues and greens, the Regency folks never saw.

The rockets that launched all this display looked something like these Congreve rockets — military rockets — from 1805.
  Rockets for firework displays were made of paper, filled with powder.  The height of accent and the timing of the explosion was carefully controlled by the tightness of the packing, the size of the case and the length of the cotton fuse.  A long stick fixed the rocket to the ground, setting the flight at the proper angle.

And they had Catherine wheels.  As early as 1540, Florence and Siena in Italy erected huge wood and papier mache wheels set in motion by rockets and fire tubes. 

Fixed designs like modern fire fountains shot streams of lit powder into the air from rolls of pasteboard filled with gunpowder. I'm particularly impressed with this picture from the mid-Eighteenth Century that shows these fire fountains and the court ladies of Mohammad Shah playing with fireworks.  Brave ladies.

Another fixed display was a spherical 'sun'.

"In the centre of the block of the sun drive a spindle on which put a small hexagonal wheel whose cases must be  filled with the same charge as the cases of the sun…a sun thus made is called a Brilliant Sun because the wood work is intierly covered with fire from the wheel to the middle so there appears nothing but sparks of a brilliant fire."

For the entry of Louis XIII into Lyon in 1623, fireworkers constructed a huge artificial lion with fire bursting from its jaw.

Fireworks were spectacle, display, public celebration.  In 1814, in a jubilee in celebration of peace in London —


"The senses were next astonished and enchanted with a pacific exhibition of those tremendous instruments of destruction invented by colonel Congreve. Some notion even of their terrible power might be formed from the display of the night, and their exceeding beauty could be contemplated, divested of its usual awful associations. Each rocket contains in itself a world of smaller rockets: as soon as it is discharged from the gun it bursts, and flings aloft in the air innumerable parcels of flame, brilliant as the brightest stars: the whole atmosphere was illuminated by a delicate blue light, which threw an air of inchantment over the trees and lawns, and made even the motley groups of universal London become interesting as an assembly in romance."

 

What's the most memorable fireworks you've ever seen or participated in?  Anything from backyard sparklers to the aurora borealis or australis.  

One lucky commenter will win their choice of Black Hawk or Forbidden Rose.

 

 

Comments

[Suzan Tisdale]

Most memorable? I wish I could say it took place in London or Australia or perhaps New York City.

But my most memorable fireworks display took place 4th of July, seven years ago, in Pekin, IL. It was a great display, but what made it most memorable was my husband. ;o)

We'd only been married a three months. He took me and my three kids to see the display. What I remember most was the fact that he held my hand the entire time. (Keep in mind that I had been married before to a less than romantic individual, lol)

What made the entire day so special was the fact that he made certain we all enjoyed the evening as well as the display. He had to make certain we had the best seats, that we had plenty of popcorn, bug spray and water! lol Its the simple things in life that can often times mean more to a person than flying to France for breakfast! lol

It was the simple acts of kindness shown to my kids, the fact that he held my hand nearly the entire time, and that he would give me a kiss every time I said "ooooh" or "aaaah" that made the night so special! ;o)

Thanks for letting me share. ;o)

Suzan Tisdale

[Shannon McEwan]

Years ago, when Guy Fawkes night was still GO in Australia (domestic sale of fireworks became illegal in the early 1980s), I had the pleasure of making my own roman candle type fireworks.

My step-father was a pharmacist with a side interest in lapidary. We had ready access to all the basic materials, including an interesting array of metal filings for different coloured sparks. It was the penultimate DIY - there's no thrill quite like discovering, after several days wait, what a home-made firework looks like in action.

[Cara Elliott/Andrea Penrose]

Such a fun post, Joanna! I would have loved to seen (and heard) the celebration in 1748 (I adore Handel's Musik for Royal Fireworks)

The best display of pyrotechnics I've seen was a number of summers ago, when a friend invited me to his tennis club (sadly now defunct) right on the Queens side of East River in NYC for the famous Macy's 4th of July fireworks. We were about fifty yards from the water, with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop . . .let me tell you, New York sure know how to put on a bang of a show! It was spectacular!

[Janga]

The July 4th fireworks display at Stone Mountain, Georgia, combined with the laser show is the most spectacular I've seen; but for sheer magic and joy, nothing has ever equaled the backyard sparklers of my childhood.

[joanna bourne]

Oh Suzan --

That is so romantic. It brings tears to my eyes.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Shannon --

That is so very cool. I have somehow missed the chance to work with black powder and blow things up.

Who knows. That may lie in my future.

But I do watch Mythbusters. (US TV Science show where they blow things up in a 'Don't Do This At Home' fashion.)

[joanna bourne]

Hi Cara --

I think I may have seen snippets of the Macy's fireworks on TV. As you say, impressive.

When there are so many people watching, the program can try out all the latest technology.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Janga --

When you say that, I suddenly remember so well. Barefoot in the grass and hamburgers on the picnic table. Sparklers.

"Put them out in here!" and my mother had a coffee can of sand for us to put the hot sparklers in. "I don't want anyone stepping on a hot sparkler."

[Na S.]

I remember during my childhood my family went to a park that was having a carnival. It was a few hours away and we had a lot of fun. When it was time to leave that evening, we couldn't. Traffic was closed for some reason and we were directed pack to the park to wait. There was food stands set up and an impromptu firework show. That was an unexpected but nice way to end the day and memorable.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Na --

That is so cool. Impromtu partying. The best kind. Oh, most assuredly.

[Debbie]

Brightly colored lights remind me of country fairs and amusement parks and the light parade and fireworks at Disney. But nothing makes me feel like a kid again like a sparkler in hand - it's a cross between an electric dandelion exploding seeds into the night and the glint of sun on water as you drive up to the lake or head out to the pool on a scorching hot summer day.

[Margot]

One particularly memorable firework viewing for me was the 4th of July a few years ago. I was at my grandparents' house in Hawaii (always a nice place to be) and it actually didn't rain (for once), so we went to the beach to watch the fireworks go off. (Although, thinking back, I remember more about the snacks we brought than the actual fireworks... But I suppose that is the way of fireworks, is it not?)

Nothing can really compare to playing with sparklers as a child, though. My favorite thing to do was always writing words in the air. (My mom was kind of paranoid, though, so sparklers were a very rare treat for us.)

And one story I remember from Chinese school. A man named Wan Hu wanted to travel into space, so he strapped fireworks to his chair, lit them, and then disappeared. (Somehow, though, I don't think it went quite as he planned...)

[Mary Jo Putney]

My Mayhem Consultant was friends with the fire captain in charge of safety for the port of Baltimore, so one year the friend got us fireline passes so we could get inside the safety lines to watch the barge based Inner Harbor show on the Fourth of July. Not only fireworks, but the reflections of fireworks. We were so close that the captain's wife was bonked on the head by a cardboard piece of rocket casing. Luckily she wasn't hurt--but it did demonstrate why they had safety lines. *G*

[joanna bourne]

@Debbie --

And with sparklers you can draw lines on the night and they somehow stay there. Has to be magic.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Margot --

I remember that Chinese story was subject of a Mythbuster's episode. They were asking if it could be done. Flying on a rocket.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Mary Jo --

The 'fireworks manuals' of the time talk about how it's good to let fireworks off near water and how to angle them so they don't hit anybody.

There's some of the delightful C18 commentary that essentially says -- "If you hit a common person on the head it's okay. Make sure you don't hit an aristocrat or your goose is cooked."

[Louis]

Remember playing with "sparklers" as a youngun'.
Had a "roman candle" explode in my hand. That soured fireworks for a while....youth recovers quickly and enjoy firworks on any scale.

[Betty Hamilton]

My young family and I were lucky enough to experience the main fireworks display at Disney World in 1976... the centeniel! Wow!! The fireworks were extraordinary and seemed to go on forever. Then,of course, was the Disney parade to top off the fireworks!!

[Cate S]

For several years, we would go the Conner Praire summer concerts during the 4th of July weekends.. they would shoot off fireworks after the 1812 Overture [complete with cannon fire provided by military]. But if you want a real treat.. find someone with a small airplane to fly you ... it's really cool from the sky!

[Minna]

I've seen aurora borealis quite a few times and I would choose that over man made fire works any day.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Minna --

I am so envious of you having seen the aurora. It's on my life list, but I live too far south to see it even when we've got solar storms.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Cate --

The combination of fireworks and music just seems so natural. And the 1812 Overture would be the go-to music for this.

I don't want loudspeakers blasting out music, though. Has to be live music.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Betty--

I've been to the Disney fireworks and the Disney parade in Anaheim. Love them. Hokey, but charming.

In fact, we used to live close enough we could see the fireworks from the apartment.

[joanna bourne]

A roman candle blew up in your hand? Yikes!!

I have to say, holding something like that seems dangerous. But if you look at the posting, you'll see that's what the young court ladies in India were doing.

[Diane Sallans]

I love a fireworks display set to rousing music - patriotic or inspiring like the 1812 overture. Disney does do a fun presentation - great way to end the day there. I'll always remember the fireworks I saw in Hawaii at Waikiki beach on one 4th of July - so pretty over the ocean while sitting on the beach.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Diane --

They shoot off fireworks near Cape Canaveral in Florida. A couple of times I've been on a balcony there, overlooking the sea. The water is full of little boats, come out to watch.

It's special. Very special.

[Anne Gracie]

Fascinating post, Joanna.

Shannon, I remember those days so well -- I used to live for Guy Fawkes night and the bonfire and the fireworks. I adore fireworks and even love the smell of crackers. Makes me completely nostalgic. I really miss having the fireworks up close and setting them off ourselves by hand. The big public displays are wonderful, and the effects extraordinary -- Sydney fireworks on New Year are always stupendous -- but setting off sky rockets and Catherine Wheels and Vesuvius fireworks and crackers of all sizes yourself, is so much more exciting.

The last firework display I went to was last year, the 4th July in Dubuque, Iowa, when I was visiting. We were invited to a beautiful Victorian era house, high on the hill, and had a stunning view of the fireworks. It was a gorgeous night.

[Grace Burrowes]

My most memorable fireworks were not the kind one sees illuminating the night sky. I cannot wait to find out why you researched this topic. Fireworks, indeed.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Anne --

I love homegrown fireworks myself. My father, the town's GP and surgeon, was called on most years to deal with the results of fireworks + alcohol + general idiocy.
So we didn't get to set them off at home.

Heck.

But I let my kids do fountains and little rockets and the horrible ones that just make noise and don't give you any light show.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Grace --

Every once in a while we'll see a story with a combination of literal fireworks and metaphorical ones.

I'm trying to remember where I've seen this, though. The scene almost comes to mind . . . but the book title is intriguingly beyond reach.

[Liz]

As a child, could curl up on windowsill to watch 4th of July fireworks over the ball park about a mile away. Beauty without the deadening noise.

[Tricia]

My husband and I consider 4th of July one of the romantic holidays. We have a large display at a nearby town. We spend the day picnicking by the river's edge and the evening is topped off with the fireworks. we always kiss during the show. We joke that we hear fireworks go off whenever we kiss but on 4th of July everyone else can hear them too! ;-)

[joanna bourne]

Hi Tricia --

Oh my. That does sound most lovely. Most Romantic.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Liz --

The noise is a problem for me to. I remember when my daughter was about a year old, we took her to a big park near Bonn Germany to see the fireworks display over the Rhine.

Scared her to death, poor chicken.

While everyone else was going ohhh and ahhh we were rolling a screaming baby in the opposite direction.