Congreve, William

Congreve, William

(b. Middlesex, England, 20 May 1772; d. Toulouse, France, 16 May 1828),

rocketry.

Congreve was the eldest son of Lieutenant General Sir William Congreve, colonel commandant of the royal artillery and comptroller of the royal arsenal at Woolwich. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1793; M.A., 1795) and became a barrister and, later, the proprietor of the Royal Standard, a newspaper. About 1804 he turned his interests to improving and perfecting the rocket as a military weapon. England subsequently adopted “Congreve rockets,” which were used with great success against the French at Boulogne, Copenhagen, Leipzig, and elsewhere. They were copied by most European armies by 1830.

Congreve was named an equerry to his friend the prince regent (later George IV) and elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1811. The same year he was made an honorary lieutenant colonel in the Hanoverian Artillery and subsequently rose to the rank of major general. At the death of his father in 1814, he succeeded as the second baronet (Congreve of Walton) and as comptroller of the royal arsenal.

Congreve married the widow Isabella M’Envoy in 1824 at Wesel, Prussia, and had two sons and a daughter. From 1826 he was compelled to settle permanently on the Continent because of failing health and in order to avoid the scandal of his involvement in a case of fraud. In convalescence, he devised his own wheelchair after losing the use of his legs, and also designed a “wave-wheel”-propelled vessel and a human-muscle-powered aircraft.

Eighteen patents were issued to Congreve in his lifetime. These included new methods of mounting naval ordnance, gunpowder manufacture, printing unforgeable currency, gas lighting, “hydropneumatic” canal locks, several kinds of clocks, a perpetual motion machine, a built-in sprinkler system, and a steam engine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Congreve wrote over a dozen treatises on his inventions, including Memoir on the Possibility… of the Destruction of the Boulogne Flotilla (London, 1806); A Concise Account of the Origin and Progress of the Rocket System (London, 1814); A Concise Account of the Origin of the New Class of 24-Pounder Medium Guns (London, 1814); Of the Impracticability of Resumption of Cash-Payments (London, 1819); Principles on… a More Perfect System of Currency (London, 1819); and A Treatise on the General Principles… of the Congreve Rocket System (London, 1827).

II. Secondary Literaur. The best biographical article on Congreve is Col. J. R. J. Jocelyn, “The Connection of the Ordnance Department With National & Royal Fireworks, Including Some Account of… Sir William Congreve (2nd Baronet),” in Journal of the Royal Artillery (Woolwich), 32 (1905–1906), 481–503. See also Elizabeth M. Harris, Sir William Congreve and His Compound-Plate Printer, Museum of History and Technology Paper no. 71 (Washington, D.C., 1967); Willy Ley, Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel (New York, 1944, and later eds.); Merigon de Montgéry, Traité des fusées de guerre, nommées…fusées à la Congreve (Paris, 1825); and the unsigned “Obituary, Sir William Congreve, Bart.,” in The Times (London) (27 Apr. 1828), 2, col. 3.

Frank H. Winter