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by Hap Rocketto

When I was a working man I earned my daily bread, and my ammunition money, as a high school science teacher. One thing that seemed to be a reoccurring theme, when teaching general science to ninth graders, was that there was always a great confusion in their young minds as they transitioned from qualitative science to quantitative science. Such confusion often led them to believe that astronomy and astrology was one and the same thing. By extension this also covered chemistry and alchemy.

Certainly the two occult pseudo-sciences of astrology and alchemy presaged astronomy and chemistry. As a protoscience each laid down some basic terminology and methodology which gave a start to the rational modern day sciences to which they are related.

Astrology, in Western cultures, believes that a relationship exists between astronomical phenomena and human behavior while claiming to be able to predict future events based on the positions of celestial bodies. As early as the late 1500s, or early 1600s, this relationship was questioned by none other than William Shakespeare who wrote in The Tragedy of Julius Cesar that, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves…”

Alchemy was primarily devoted the creation of lapis philosophorum, the elusive philosopher’s stone, a material that was capable of transmuting base metals to the noble metals, silver and gold. Alchemy, more so than astrology to astronomy, contributed to the study of chemistry. Alchemists can take credit for some actual chemical achievements and techniques. Alchemists’ made intricate and detailed notes and diagrams, and developed other techniques important to modern laboratory study.

The popular image of an alchemist conjures up a bent and wizened old man, perhaps bearded, perhaps not, wearing a long dark robe. His tangled and unkempt gray hair is partially contained by a conical hat while his face is illuminated by a flame which also serves to heat a bubbling retort. Charts with strange symbols cover the stone walls of his dark dungeon like laboratory. A shelf is filled with corked bottles while the table is littered with books and scrolls. A quill pen protruding from an ink well and a mortar and pestle complete the scene.

Alchemists, real or imagined, dot the pages of science history and literature like the freckles on Howdy Doody’s face. Perhaps the most famous literary alchemist for those of my age is Claude Frollo. For my kids it is Albus Dumbledore the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft in the Harry Potter canon, the first of which is titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Frollo, on the other hand, was the Archdeacon of Notre Dame cathedral, in Victor Hugo’s classic epic novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The compassionate Frollo adopted a deformed foundling left on the cathedrals’ steps and raises him like a son. He names him Quasimodo because he was found on the first Sunday after Easter; “Low Sunday,” where the first words of the Mass is “Quasi modo geniti infants…” which roughly translates from the Latin as, “As newborn babies….”

More to the point it is widely accepted that English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon was one of the first scholars to use experimental methods in alchemy and his early experiments with gunpowder is considered the first European to describe a mixture containing the essential ingredients of gunpowder. He wrote that, “of saltpetre take six parts, live of young willow (charcoal), and five of sulphur, and so you will make thunder and lightning.”

In virtually every part of Western society the arcane art of alchemy has all but disappeared. Yet it is still kept alive by a small band of acolytes of Bacon who slave away in modern environs which could easily be confused with a medieval alchemist’s tower loft or stone walled dungeon.

Surrounded by wall mounted charts of mathematical tables and pictures, a notebook and reference book illuminated by a light at one’s elbow today’s alchemist slaves away. With obscure tools he affixing lead pellets to brass tubes filled with, as the earlier aforementioned Shakespeare called it, “villainous saltpeter…for these vile guns…”

Yes, the modern day alchemist is a rifle shooter. He might be a high power devotee who carefully prepares, weighs, and measures his brass, components, and finished product. He might be a dedicated smallbore shooter who will spend days culling through countless lots of ammunition looking for the elusive “knot lot.”

The rifleman will then take his lapis philosophorum and try to turn the base metal into gold. However, unlike his predecessor who never saw a flake of precious metal evolve from his mechanizations, the rifleman sometimes find success.

After the long hours of toiling over a reloading press or a machine rest to create or determine the best lead bullets the skilled marksman will take them to the range and test his base metal and skill against a lot of like minded individuals. In the end, one of them will best the rest and find that the lead bullets fired down range have been transformed into a small golden token representing the victory.

We live in a rational modern world but in a very real sense the alchemy of old is alive and well on rifle ranges where skilled alchemist/marksman do, indeed, turn lead into gold.

by Hap Rocketto

For War of the Roses aficionados, and particularly the Richard III Society, 2015 was a banner year, no longer a winter of their discontent it was made glorious summer by the sun of science.

Six hundred years earlier two great royal dynasties, York and Lancaster, fought for control of England. Each belligerent happened to have a heraldic badge sporting a rose, A White Rose for York and the Red Rose for Lancaster and so this decades long on again-off again struggle became known as the War of the Roses.

It all came to an end at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485. Facing a smaller Lancastrian army, lead by Henry Tudor, King Richard III, of the House of York, managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and, in the process, become the last English king to be killed in battle on English soil. To prove to the public he was dead his naked and despoiled body was unceremoniously tossed over the back of a horse and brought to the nearby town of Leicester to be publically displayed. The local Franciscan Friars laid claim to the body and gave Richard a Christian burial under the floor in front of the alter of the church of Grayfriars. The church was destroyed 50 years later when Tudor King Henry VIII parted ways with the Catholic church and decreed the Dissolution of the Monasteries. With the church gone Richard’s final resting place was lost to history.

Fast forward half a millennium to 2012. Archeologists discovered Richard’s remains buried under a parking lot in Leicester, an event which has led to a new look at the much despised monarch. He may not have been the hunchback ogre that artistic license allowed both Shakespeare and Sir Laurence Olivier to paint. Just as modern Russia recovered, and identified the secretly buried remains of the reviled House of Romanov family, executed during the Russian Revolution, by DNA analysis, so it is with the British and Richard.

As the furor over Richard waned another War of the Roses artifact was discovered to bring the civil war back into the limelight and, again, the Franciscans were a historical footnote.
Franciscan Friar and alchemist Roger Bacon, in his 1267 work Opus Majus, wrote that “…the violence of that salt called saltpeter, together with sulfur, and willow charcoal, combined into a powder, so horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small, 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.”

A century and a quarter later cannons loaded with Bacon’s powder spit flame, smoke, and balls of lead and stone across the English landscape. The forces representing York and Lancaster met in July of 1460 at the Battle of Northampton, not to be confused with the with April1264 Battle of Northampton. The 1264 battle was part of the Second Baron’s War, yet another of England’s many uncivil civil wars. England, a small and economical country apparently needs to recycle battle sites.

Excavations at Northampton turned up a badly deformed lump of lead some three inches in diameter, about the size of a cricket ball, which tipped the scales at about six pounds. It was a major archeological and historical find. It is believed that the misshapen hunk of metal is evidence of the first use of artillery on English soil. Contemporary accounts indicate the both sides had cannon but defender’s cannon were ineffective because of a driving rain which had less effect on the guns of the attackers. That makes it likely that the artifact is a wicked googly bowled by the Yorkists as they attacked Lancastrian defensive positions.

Both sides seemed to have been involved in a medieval arms race and were armed with relatively small cannon called sakers. Named after the Saker falcon the 9.5 feet long smoothbore fired round shot intended to bounce along the ground to cause as much damage as possible. The intended use accounts for the wretched condition of the sample found at Northampton. The cannonball has been deformed by two major impacts, a gouge filled with iron and sandstone picked up as it careened through the battlefield and a dent probably caused by hitting a tree.

There was little in the way of official documentation of the use of artillery in those days as gunners were usually civilians who hired out their services and cannon. Gunnery was a guild that specialized in sulfurous smoke, lightning, and thunder and so gunners were seen as sorcerers in league with the devil by the general public. Since they kept to themselves, and did not drink or plunder, their unusual behavior was ample proof, when compared to the soldiers of the day, that they were hardly human. Under those circumstances it is scarcely a surprise that a medieval Pope was reported to have issued a blanket excommunication of all gunners as they were servants of the devil.

Gunners were brought in from the cold when Henry created the Church of England and banned Catholicism from England and with it the Pope’s power to punish. The rift between Henry VIII, a good Tudor of the Red Rose, and the Catholic Church was a boon for English gunners who, having served both York and Lancastrians, could take refuge, relief, and pleasure in Shakespeare’s words, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

by Hap Rocketto

Late one recent autumn afternoon the family was gathered to quietly celebrate the 85^th birthday of our patriarch, Uncle Frank, when an explosion startled us, rattled the windows, knocked a few pictures askew, and otherwise disturbed the relaxed atmosphere.

One of our politically well connected relatives whipped out his cell phone and quickly had the Chief of Police’s attention. He learned that the blast had come from the local quarry where the police had destroyed a cache of homemade gunpowder squirreled away by a local resident. We also learned that it was the second explosion of the day.

The first blast occurred earlier that morning while a cartage company crew was moving items from the man’s house. A worker tossed a cardboard box labeled “explosives” from the second floor into the truck. The impact detonated the contents. Witnesses described a black smoke cloud and a small fire coming from the truck. What this says about the quality of the gunpowder as well as the workman’s literacy, professionalism, and common sense fills volumes.

No one was hurt, but the man, who had reportedly lost fingers in an earlier incident, told police his hobby was “making pipe bombs, fireworks and ammunition.” The police investigation found that, other than possessing a sawed off shotgun, the man had broken no laws.

In a laudable effort to rid the town of the dangerous material the authorities trucked all of the confiscated explosives to a local quarry, added a huge charge of their own, and set it off. However, they neglected to inform the local population of their intentions through the town’s Red Alert system. While the dust was still roiling upward and the boom was echoing around town the telephones of every politician, policeman, and firefighter went off. The resultant combination of cacophonous ring tones was almost as loud and annoying as the controlled explosion.

All of who have reloaded understand that the amount of powder and loaded ammunition in our ammunition lockers sound like a lot to the uninitiated outside world, but a high power shooter’s ten pounds of powder or 10,000 rounds of 22 rimfire for a smallbore shooter is really not much. However, large lots or small lots, we are all very aware of the proper storage methods required to keep components and ammunition safe and at their very best. Not so the French.

French chemist Paul Vieille perfected the first practical smokeless gunpowder in the early 1880s and called “Poudre V“, the V for Vieille not the Latin number five. It was later renamed “Poudre B,” Gallic logic believing that this brilliant juxtaposition of letters would bewilder and bamboozle the intelligence service of France’s foe, the Kaiserreich.

The smokeless Poudre B was three times more powerful than black powder and gave the French a huge tactical advantage. However, unless the temperature in powder magazines was strictly controlled the explosive quickly became unstable. Maintaining a constant cool temperature was a difficult task for ships cruising in the warm waters in which the French Navy regularly operated and was made all the more difficult in ships where the routing of steam lines took precedence over storage.

On September 12, 1905, just three months after Admiral Togo stood on her bridge, hoisted the Z flag, “crossed the T,” and defeated the Russians at Tsushima, the contents of the magazines of HIJMS Mikasa exploded. The symbol of emerging Japanese imperialism sank at her moorings.

The Brazilian battleship Aquidabã lay quietly at anchor in Jacuacanga Bay on January 21, 1906 when an explosion in the powder magazines tore the ship apart. Just three minutes after the blast the ship lay on the bottom and 212 people, including three admirals and most of the ship’s officers, were dead.

Explosions plagued the French Navy based in Toulon. A torpedo boat blew up in February of 1907. A month later, the French battleship Léna lay in dry dock she when she was gutted by a series of magazine explosions. Because Léna was resting on blocks in the dry dock it was impossible to flood the magazines. The desperate commanding officer of the battleship Patrie, moored nearby, opened fired on the gate of the dry dock in a vain attempt blow it open and allow in water.

Three more fatal ship explosions followed before September 29, 1911 when an explosion aboard the Liberté blew the ship’s bugler, as well as a 40 ton chunk of the armor plate, more than 200 yards through the air and onto the deck of the nearby battleship République. A long overdue investigation determined that the unstable Poudre B was responsible for the sinking of the Liberté, as well as the other vessels.

At long last, and at an astronomical cost in life and ships, the French replaced Poudre B with a more stable derivative. But the unstable powder would have the last word. After ten years lying on the floor of Toulon harbor the French Navy decided to clear the Liberté wreckage site. Salvors raised numerous 305cm and 194cm shells from the ship’s main and secondary batteries and deposited them into the hold of a lighter. Before the waterlogged shells filled with Poudre B could be dumped into deep water they blew up, atomizing the lighter and its crew.

The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute recommends that powder be stored in a cool, dry place, the same conditions required for the proper storage of cheese. You would think that France, a nation that produces 350 to 400 distinct types of cheese, might have been able to apply the same rules required for the safe storage of Gruyère to gunpowder.