Project Lúin

Research on Historic Irish Rockets

Indian Rockets

The main source for the technology Emmet used was the advanced rockets used by Indian rulers from 1750 to 1800. Tipu Sultan, who inflicted several defeats on British leaders including the Duke of Wellington, is known to most Indians and celebrated as an ancestor of India’s space industry. He ruled an area including the modern Indian technology capitals at Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Other Indian kingdoms also used rockets against the British, including the Scindia dynasty, whose members are now among the elected leaders of the 70 million people in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, and the Maratha Empire in the area around Gujarat and Mumbai. Other sources may have been military veterans of campaigns in India.

Robert Emmet's Rockets

Scientists Emmet knew, such as his relative by marriage, research chemist and RDS librarian John Patton, were sympathetic to his political aims and may have been the most trusted and skilled sources to hand. Emmet was an avid reader and collector of books on military history and tactics. Published works were available to him, such as The Great Art of Artillery by Polish general Kazimierz Siemienowicz, published originally in Latin but widely translated, including into English and French by Emmet's time. Such books would have been available to him in Dublin, London or Paris.

The Congreve Rockets

Rockets, materials, notes and some of Emmet's co-workers were seized afterwards by the British and taken to London.

The British built their own first military rockets with no mention of Emmet’s contribution, a project led by Sir William Congreve, an engineer, politician and businessman from a prominent Anglo-Irish family. The Congreve family estate at Mount Congreve in Waterford was left to the nation on the death of Ambrose Congreve in 2011.

Congreve’s rockets were used in the war waged between Britain and the United States, scattering an American army and burning down Washington DC in August 1814, after which the White House was first painted white to hide the scorch marks. A further British attack a few weeks later against the city of Baltimore, Maryland, was recorded in a poem by an eyewitness, Francis Scott Key: “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in the air”. The poem became America’s national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.

Lessons for Today

Robert Emmet’s rockets highlight Ireland’s history, then and now, as a leading scientific and engineering nation, which remains less well-known than our cultural and political achievements. Rocketry continues to grow as a student activity in Ireland through Rocketry Ireland. Aerospace continues to grow in economic and strategic importance. This leads naturally to the ambition that Ireland should become the latest European nation, the twelfth after Poland’s recent success, to launch a rocket of its own into space.

Project Outline

The project aims to understand and share this history as it has never been before. Planned activities will include:

1. Gather whatever details are available on Emmet’s rockets from the historical record, focusing on the technical details that have rarely been the focus of interest by historians.
   • Explore and document the characteristics of the artefacts available from the Emmet rockets, the Indian rockets and the Congreve rockets, including their metallurgy, casing, propellant, payload, flight behaviour, manufacturing process, storage and tactical use.
   • Create digital twins in the form of fully detailed and usable Computer Aided Design (CAD) files and simulation models of rocket combustion and flight for the Emmet rockets, the rockets from the Indian states and the Congreve rockets built in Britain.
   • Trace, using Indian sources, the history of Emmet and the United Irishmen, British records and artefacts, and the scientific and military literature of the time, the role of Emmet in the evolution of rocketry, his likely sources for his rocket designs and what of his influence can be seen in British work.
2. Recreate accurate physical reproductions of the Emmet and other rockets.
   • High-quality iron models made by hand or 3D-printed can be used for display in public and should be offered to museums in this field, especially those displaying historic rockets.
   • Key influencers in rocketry, aerospace and technology should see these models as a demonstration of Ireland’s history as an advanced technological nation.
   • Building rockets using the original designs with iron cases and black-powder propellant will allow us to understand and reproduce the design choices and manufacturing process used by Emmet.
3. Testing will give proof that Emmet’s rocket designs plausibly flew as the eyewitness accounts claim.
   • Static testing of replicas can show, as with a modern rocket or jet engine, that they burn steadily without destroying the rocket and with steady thrust powerful enough to fly the distances of 1,000 yards and more achieved by the British rockets.
   • Flying the same Emmet rockets will show their flight in real conditions, using instrumentation and sensors to help measure their range, power and accuracy and verify our historical and engineering analysis.
4. Public engagement.
   • Reproductions can be made cheaply and easily for the general public.
   • Plastic replicas should also be designed to be marketed by existing manufacturers such as Estes in the American hobby rocket market, to be built and flown by school and amateur rocket clubs, a common activity in American secondary schools.
   • Test flights should be open to public audiences where possible. Others should be recorded on video for distribution on social media and for public broadcast media.
5. Public diplomacy.
   • Commemorations of Robert Emmet, usually celebrated annually on the anniversary of his death on 20 September, should report on this research.
   • The anniversary of the bombardment of Washington DC on 24 August should be memorialised to include the role of the Congreve rocket and Emmet's work.
   • As Congreve is already commemorated for his British rockets by having a crater on the moon named after him, the Irish government, perhaps working together with India, should have the same tribute paid for Robert Emmet and for Tipu Sultan.