The era before Mysore Rockets

There are numerous references to ‘agnibanas’ in Indian literature.  This was simply an arrow set on fire and released from a bow. But the rocket came later with the Chinese who had pioneered the development of early gunpowder as well as its use in fireworks from the 13^th C onwards. A rocket is a device that works by action and reaction and moves forward simply by expelling their exhaust in the opposite direction at high speed.  The early war rocket was a tube made of wood or paper filled with a combustible powder and strapped to an arrow. These casings were not capable of withstanding high temperatures and pressure inside and as a result they could not fly large distances. Such rockets made of wood and paper which would only scare the enemy’s’ animals or set fire to his baggage were only a minor nuisance for the enemy and mostly unable of causing any serious damage to alter the outcome of the war. The development of Chinese rockets remained stagnant while the Indians went several steps beyond and used them extensively.

Mysore Rockets – Among the world’s first documented metal cased rockets

Towards the later part of the 18th C Mysore burst upon the world stage as the greatest threat to the British in India. It succeeded in doing this by transforming itself into Industrial state with a strong army. Haidar Ali and later his son Tipu Sultan established their dominance over strategic forts, trade routes, ports and resource rich parts of South India. The British fought them at every step of the way. It was in this series of wars that England and the wider world was introduced to a new weapon of war – The Mysore ‘Metal cased’ Rocket. While metal cased rockets were used elsewhere in India too it was only in Mysore under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan that these weapons were used extensively and corps of rocket-men organized in such a manner so as to add substantial teeth and muscle to the army.

The British who saw these iron cased rockets for the first time in the Anglo-Mysore wars with Haidar Ali were both amazed and frightened of them. They mention that the shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of their column, passed through to its rear causing deaths and wounds from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet or sharp sword blades which were attached to them. The instant a bamboo stick or sword blade attached to the rocket passed through a man’s body it resumed its initial speed and destroyed ten or twenty further men until the combustible matter with which it was charged was spent. Mysore was among the first states in the world to have moved to the next stage of rocket development from wooden firework rockets to metal war rockets successfully.

                                                                                                                   

                            

Mysore Rocketman with a Rocket attached to flag: Robert Home, V&A Museum Collection

                                                                                                                                               

The Mysorean Rocketmen and fate of the Mysore rockets after 1799

The Mysorean infantry under Tipu Sultan was organized into divisions called Kacheris. In each Kacheri which had soldiers as well as clerical staff, a small group of rocket men called        ‘Bana-dara’ were also attached. Rockets were called ‘Bana’ and the person who was in charge of using  the rocket was called ‘Banadar’ – ‘Bana’ from the Kannada for arrow and ‘dar’ from the Persian for ‘who holds’. The Mysore rockets were observed to be made of iron cylinders strapped to a bamboo pole or to a sword blade with leather straps.

A banadar preparing a rocket for launch: Robert Home, V&A Museum Collection

It was only after the death of Tipu Sultan and the defeat of Mysore in 1799 that the British took away several of these rockets to England for study. They were brought and displayed as war trophies in Woolwich’s Royal Military Repository which still has two of these rockets. For over 200 years these and three rockets in the Bangalore government museum and one at the Murshidabad museum were the only Mysore rockets to be found anywhere in the world. The question of where did all the other rockets go had confounded historians as well as researchers of Rocket science for long. With this meager number of specimens available, any research that could be done on them and their characteristics was also limited.

                                                                                                                                               

Discovery of Rockets in Nagara

In April 2002, during the course of removal of silt from an old well in a Areca nut plantation belonging to Mr. Nagaraj Rao in Nagara, a large number of cylindrical metal objects which were later identified as Rockets were retrieved from the mud dug out of the well and then transferred to the Shivappa Nayaka Government Museum at Shimoga where they were deposited and can be found today. In 2018 during an exploration of the same site many more rockets were discovered. A map of Nagara in the British library shows the presence of an powder magazine and an armoury near this well in the early 19^th C. For the students of the History of Rocketry, this was for the first time in over two centuries, that such a large number of rockets was available for observation and study.

Find of the rockets in Nagara

                                                                                                                                               

The history of Nagara

The Keladi dynasty which was founded in 1499 AD rose into prominence after the decline of the Vijaynagara empire. The Nayakas built a formidable kingdom which stretched over the Malnad region and parts of coastal Karnataka extending up to Kasargod in Kerala. Shivappa Nayaka, the most prominent Keladi Nayaka ascended the throne at Bednur which became the third and the grandest capital of the Keladi kingdom. Soon Bednur would grow into a very large kingdom with about a lakh houses. In 1759 Nagara fell to Haidar Ali who was the military commander of Mysore’s army. Haidar was so delighted on the conquest of this city that he changed the name of the city from Bednur to Haidarnagara. It is popularly known as Nagara.

Nagara occupied a very strategic position as Keladi’s capital and later the second most important city in Mysore after Srirangapatna. Being at the heart of the Malnad region surrounded by dense forests and being unapproachable for most of the year because of heavy rainfall it could be defended from enemies and also commanded an important strategic position overlooking the coasts of Mangalore and North Canara as well as the passes leading down to the ‘Byluseema’ regions of Chitradurga. Much of the revenue from the rice, sandal and pepper trade of Malnad and North Canara landed at Nagara before going to Mysore. Along with it’s strategic location Haidar Ali  also made full use of the proficiency of the craftsmen of Nagar and used them to produce articles for Mysore.

Map of Mysore Kingdom, 1799: John B. & Co.

                                                                                                                                   

The Rockets found at Nagara

These are metallic cylindrical tubes sealed at both the ends. The sealing is done via a metal disc at both the ends with one of the discs having a circular hole for the purpose of the fuse and which functions as the rocket nozzle at one end. The rockets are filled with a black colored powder which has a pungent smell even today. A wide variance in dimensions of the rockets is seen with lengths varying from 19 cms. to 30 cms. and diameters varying from 3 cms. to 7 cms and weight varying from 500 gms to 1750 gms.

Samples of rockets found at Nagara

Top end of the Rocket   

           

                                              

Nozzle end of the rocket

                                                                                                                                   

The parts of the Rocket

The rocket clearly shows a cylindrical casing. One end of the rocket has a disc with a thick layer of some material under it. At the other end is another disc with a hole for the fuse clearly visible. Inside this cylinder we find  powder and a fuse.

Emission spectroscopy and wet Chemistry investigations point to the carbon percentage in the rocket metal to be from 0.03 % to 0.33 %. This is a very low carbon steel with other elements being negligible. The extremely low Carbon percentage was for making a cylinder from a metal sheet. The microstructure was shown to be ferritic. Than Mysorean blacksmiths could in the 18th C manufacture large quantities of Low Carbon Steel as this speaks volumes about their technological superiority.

A good amount of the brown colored substance seen lining the interior of the rocket casing is found to be a refractory material – Clay. This discovery is very important for the reason that the Mysorean technicians had realized that a thermal insulator was required between the charge inside the casing and the casing itself to protect the casing from the high temperatures that would be developed inside. The analysis of the powder from the rockets shows that it fits the composition of gunpowder. 

The thickness of the casing is between 2 to 4 mm across different portions. The End discs at both ends of the rocket are of the same thickness. It is seen that the nozzle diameters varied between 6 to 8 mm. So this meant that the Mysoreans were attempting to standardise nozzle diameters and largely succeeded in this too. Visual observation of the fuse through a Microscope  with 50X magnification showed the fuse consisting of several strands of fibrous material with dimensions of around 20 Microns.

Magnified image of Rocket Fuse: PAC Shimoga

                                                                                                                                   

X-Ray Image of a Mysore Rocket: Observe the dark tint of the heat insulating clay layer at the edges of the casing : Pallakki NDT Excellence Center, Bengaluru

Tools and other objects found with the Rockets

Augur like tool used for the fuse

        

Clay objects found with the Rockets

This augur like tool found in the same well as the rockets would have been used to make a cavity through the packed gunpowder in the rocket casing for inserting the fuse.

These clay pots may have been used in different stages of rocket manufacture with the conical shaped pot which is open at both ends being possibly used as a funnel to pour the gunpowder into the rocket casing. The Nagara site is also special for the fact that this is the first time ever that rocket manufacture tools were also found along with the rockets there.

                                                                                                                                               

Probable Method of Rocket Manufacture

Low carbon steel sheets would be made first, then cut to the required rocket sizes and rolled over a cylinder and finally the overlapping region would be joined using heat and pressure. After this, the two end discs would be cut out from a similar sheet with a hole for the nozzle made in the middle of one of the discs. Then a disc would be held at one end of the cylindrical casing and crimped to it using heat and pressure. After this, using some kind of tool, the interior of the casing would be lined with a coating of clay. After this gunpowder would added into the casing and packed tightly inside. After this some more clay would then be applied into the cylinder and the disc with the hole attached to end of the cylinder using heat. Finally the fuse would be inserted into the rocket into the cavity made through the powder by the augur tool.  After this a bamboo stick would be tied to the rocket with leather strips and it was ready to be fired.

Metal Rocket making technology in Nagara

Nagara was near some important sources of Iron ore. Towards the middle of January, 1792 after the British Bombay Army had captured Shimoga, they sent a detachment to a place nearby called ‘Toorkhunhooly’ that was said to be “a place famous for making rockets” Several areas around Shimoga are situated on the Geological feature called the ‘Dharwar Craton’ that is known for a very good deposits of Iron as well as haematite and magnetite schist. There are a string of sites nearby known for iron ore mining and smelting even prior to the 10th C AD.   

According to Francis Hamilton Buchanan, who in 1800 was sent by Lord Richard Wellesley, Governor General of India to Mysore to collect data, there existed in many parts of Mysore state, iron forges for the manufacture of iron. The Mysorean method of production of steel was superior to the contemporary European method of cementation by charcoal alone, which used to take anything between six to twenty days. By contrast, under the Mysorean method carbon and hydro-carbon acting jointly on iron formed steel within four to six hours.

                                                                                                                                   

The debt the world of Rocketry owes to India

After the Mysore rockets were taken away to Woolwich in England, William Congreve would improvise upon his earlier inefficient rockets and give to the British a much more effective war rocket that would play an important part in the wars that would follow against their American and European enemies. The citizens of Shimoga, Karnataka as well as India can be proud today that each and every rocket in any country right from India’s ISRO  to America’s NASA owe their origins to rockets similar to the ones found in Nagara that you can see today in what is India’s only Mysore Rocket gallery at the Shivappa Nayaka Government Museum in Shimoga (Karnataka State) now.

References:

Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, Volume XXII, No 6, 2018: Rudrappa Shejeshwara and Nidhin G. Olikara: ROCKETS FROM MYSORE UNDER HAIDAR ALI AND TIPU SULTAN: PRELIMINARY STUDIES OF ‘TIPU ROCKETS’ FROM THE NAGARA FIND’

Acknowledgements:

Late Mr. Nagaraja Rao and Family, Nagara

The Commissioner, Directors and Staff: Department of Archaeology, Museums and Heritage – Government of Karnataka

Mr. V.K. Divekar B.Engg., Principal Metallurgist &Director – Perfect
Alloy Components Pvt. Ltd., Shimoga

Prof. H.S. Mukunda, Former Group Leader – Combustion, Gasification
and Propulsion Lab, Department of Aerospace Engineering., Indian Institute
of Science, Bangalore. Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences

Prof. Sharada Srinivasan FRAS, Dean & Professor, School of
Humanities, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore.