Lieutenant General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the battlefield, who was norma ...

Sir William Congreve, 1st Baronet (4 July 1742 – 30 April 1814) was a British military officer who improved artillery strength through gunpowder experiments.

Personal life

William Congreve was born in

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, England. It is located about south of Stoke-on-Trent, north of Wolverhampton, and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 71,673 at the 2021–2022 United Kingd ...

on 4 July 1742. He and his first wife, Rebecca Elmston, had four children together, two sons and two daughters. His eldest son,

William Congreve William Congreve (24 January 1670 – 19 January 1729) was an English playwright, satirist, poet, and Whig politician. He spent most of his career between London and Dublin, and was noted for his highly polished style of writing, being regard ...

, invented the

Congreve Rocket The Congreve rocket was a type of rocket artillery designed by British inventor Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet, Sir William Congreve in 1808. The design was based upon Mysorean rockets, the rockets deployed by the Kingdom of Mysore against ...

. His second wife, Julia-Elizabeth Eyre, died aged 78 in 1831. Congreve was made a

Baronet A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14th ...

on 7 December 1812. He died on 30 April 1814. He was succeeded in his posts by his son.

Military career

By 1778 Congreve had obtained the rank of Captain and was appointed Superintendent of Military Machines. He worked out of

Woolwich Woolwich () is a town in South London, southeast London, England, within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The district's location on the River Thames led to its status as an important naval, military and industrial area; a role that was mainta ...

where he had the resources to train artillerymen. Sir William advocated government-run gunpowder mills, arguing that the privately owned concerns "have had such a prodigious profit allowed them" and yet the merchants left the job in the hands of "artful but ignorant Foremen, who probably made a very considerable profit by their Masters' inattention". As during the

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a Great Power conflict fought primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and South Asia. The protagonists were Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Prus ...

England had become increasingly concerned about the low standard of their gunpowder, the government was convinced to purchase an additional set of powder mills instead of farming out production to powder merchants. The Faversham Mill was purchased in 1759, followed by

Waltham Abbey Waltham Abbey is a suburban town and civil parish in the Epping Forest District of Essex, within the London metropolitan area, metropolitan and urban area of London, England, East London, north-east of Charing Cross. It lies on the Greenwich ...

in 1787 and Ballincollig in 1804. Sir William became the deputy comptroller of the Woolwich Royal Laboratory in 1783, with control over the Faversham and Waltham Abbey mills. In 1789, then-Major Congreve was appointed as comptroller. Author Brenda Buchanan asserts, that during his time in these positions, he oversaw three major changes in the manufacturing of gunpowder, being "the substitution of edge runner mills for stamping mills ..., the production of charcoal by low-temperature distillation in closed iron cylinders, and the employment of

screw press A screw press is a type of machine press in which the ram is driven up and down by a screw. The screw shaft can be driven by a handle or a wheel. It works by using a coarse screw to convert the rotation of the handle or drive-wheel into a small d ...

es for compacting powder into cakes." In this role he also implemented the manufacture of two different kinds of powder, one for muskets and one for canons. Congreve believed that the different powders led to an increase in ballistic force. However Steele and Doorland have suggested that the perceived increase in strength may have come from better quality construction materials. Congreve oversaw the establishment of two new facilities at Portsmouth and Plymouth which were dedicated to revitalizing damp or lumpy powder, as the procedure for fixing such issues was quicker than the process for making new powder. This resulted in an improved method of extracting

saltpetre Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with a sharp, salty, bitter taste and the chemical formula . It is a potassium salt of nitric acid. This salt consists of potassium cations and nitrate anions , and is therefore an alkali metal nitrate ...

and consequently higher quality gunpowder.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Congreve, William 1742 births 1814 deaths British Army lieutenant generals British Army personnel of the French Revolutionary Wars Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom Government munitions production in the United Kingdom People from Stafford Military personnel from Staffordshire