A strip from The Victor

See The Victor 642 - 651.

Writer:- The Victor editorial team. Artist:- Ted Rawlings.

Main cast:- Sergeant Bill Rogan; Professor Finklater.

Time period:- 1799, Malta; British Rocket Troop.

From what I have read, there is no evidence that rockets were ever used by British troops at the siege of Malta. So this is a 'what if' series. What is fact is that British troops had been on the receiving end of rockets fired at them by Tipu Sultan's Mysorean rockets fired by his Indian troops. This occured during the Second Anglo-Mysore War at the Battle of Pollilur in 1780. Rockets were again used in the Third and Fourth Anglo-Mysore wars.

An English officer, Bayley fighting in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore war wrote that,

"So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles ...". He continued: "the rockets and musketry from 20,000 of the enemy were incessant. No hail could be thicker. Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column, passing through to the rear, causing death, wounds, and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet, which are invariably attached to them'."

The British invented their own version of rockets for military use, based on the Indian Mysorean rockets. This work was carried out by Sir William Congreve in 1804. (Five years after this series). The rockets were first used in anger during the Napoleonic Wars, but they turned out to be not always reliable. Causing damage not only to the French, but also to British troops.

Another observer Mercer, retreating with the British during the retreat of British forces from Quatre Bras on the 17th June, 1815 described how -

"The rocketeers had placed a little iron triangle in the road with a rocket lying on it. The order to fire is given - port-fire applied - the fidgety missile begins to sputter out sparks and wriggle its tail for a second or so, and then darts forth straight up the chaussée. A gun stands right in its way, between the wheels of which the shell in the head of the rocket bursts, the gunners fall right and left… our rocketeers kept shooting off rockets, none of which ever followed the course of the first; most of them, on arriving about the middle of the ascent, took a vertical direction, whilst some actually turned back upon ourselves - and one of these, following me like a squib until its shell exploded, actually put me in more danger than all the fire of the enemy throughout the day." (Mercer, Cavalié Journal of the Waterloo Campaign.- 1870.-)

The following adventures of Rogan's Rocket Troop are from issues 642; 643; 646; 647; 648 and 650.

***Please note that I am using a standard thumbnail image for all the full size pictures on this page. This is purely being done to save myself sometime.***