3-074-565 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Explosion of the Rocket Factory at Woolwich Arsenal, as seen from Plumstead Marshes, 1883. 'A most terrifying disaster...A fire broke out...in one of the...buildings of the East Laboratory, where cartridges and explosive projectiles are manufactured...This building was used as a workshop for the painting of military rockets, and above seven hundred of those formidable instruments of war, fully charged with gunpowder, lay there in store. They presently ignited, and began to fly abroad, whizzing through the...air with coils of white smoke behind them, as is observed in the use of rockets in actual warfare, and coming down at long distances...A man and a boy...were instantly killed by the explosion...Besides six hundred of Hale's war-rockets, which are hollow cylinders...charged with gunpowder,...there were a number of Boxer's 12-pounder rockets, used in case of shipwreck to cast a rope or line from shore to the vessel in danger. The rockets flew into the buildings of the Armoury and the Small Arms Experimental Branch...A rocket fell in the garden of the Rev. J. M'Alister, two or three miles distant...It seems wonderful that more than five hundred of these terrible projectiles should have been let loose, and should have done so little harm'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.