Congreave Maker

Hi, can anybody help me with what a Congreave Maker is. It is from a birth
certificate dated 1850. I have done a web search but without success.

Eve McLaughlin...

Two possible articles, both allegedly invented by William Congreve.
#The Congreve rocket, a distress signal for use at sea, an improvement
on any previous models.
The Congreve match, an early friction match which you could strike on
your boot sole or a handy chunk of masonry - suppose to ignite in the
wind. Faster and simpler than faffing around with a tinderbox.

M. J. Powell...

They were common in my childhood, until Safety Matches' came along.

Film error: Maigret strikes his match on a wall. France had Safety
Matches when the books were written.

Peter Goodey...

Not "les cygnes"?

Sorry. Time for bed

(End of Useless Fact No.1)

Many thanks in advance.

Andrew Hough...

Congreve Rockets were used as weapons in the early 19th century. I'm not
sure when they were phased out. Try a web search for "Congreve
Rocket" (without the inverted commas) for further details.

Charani...

Keeping the quotation marks will actually help. They filter out most
of the irrelevant hits.

Don Phillipson...

At about the date when the army stopped using Congreve
rockets as a weapon, rockets were used for life-saving at
sea (shooting a line to a nearby ship). Because of their
availability and tested ballistic properties, Congreve
rockets were probably used for thiis purpose. The
rocket-propelled line was in use until 1950, perhaps
more recently.

Graeme Wall...

Certainly still in use in the 1980s by the RNLI and I suspect it still is.

Somewhere I have footage of the RNLI delivering the last Christmas parcels to
the Needles lighthouse before it became automatic. They used a rocket to get
a line ashore which lead to a certain amount of embarrasment when the first
two just fell out of the launching tube! They hadn't been packed properly
and had got wet on the trip out.