The Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria produced enormous activity in the manufacture of fireworks. Displays great and small took place all over the United Kingdom, or rather, the Empire.
Among the displays fired on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee, certainly not the least interesting, although comparatively small in extent, was that given at Blantyre in the heart of the African continent. This display, which included a portrait of Her late Majesty, was carried up three hundred and sixty miles of the Zambesi, thence by canoe over eighty miles of sandbanks and mud, and finally thirty miles overland with a rise of 3,500 feet.
Other displays were the display on the Tagus in 1886 on the occasion of the marriage of the late King of Portugal; the display fired from Brooklyn Bridge for the Columbus Tercentenary in 1892; the Imperial Fete on the Danube in 1903; the display fired from thirteen battleships moored at a distance of a quarter of a mile from each other on the occasion of the “Entente Cordiale” visit of the French Fleet in 1905; the display celebrating the Tercentenary of the founding of Quebec in 1908; and the greatest display of fireworks ever fired—the official Peace display in Hyde Park in 1919, in which some of the ground works suffered from the rain which, unfortunately, started about five o’clock, but the aerial work was on an unprecedented scale, shells varying from sixteen inches down to 5½ inches in diameter being fired in salvoes of twenty-five to one hundred.
Rockets of 1 lb. were fired in flights of one hundred, and a final flight of three thousand; sets of Roman candles, each containing two hundred; one hundred fiery jets, etc., etc. The “Fourth of June” celebration at Eton has always been the occasion of a firework display, and displays have taken place annually, with the exception of the years of the Great War, from at least as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Hone, in his “Everyday Book” (1831), speaks of the fireworks as a well-established feature of the festival.
It is possible, and even probable, that they date from the reign of George III, on whose birthday the event takes place.
PANORAMA OF SOME OF THE AERIAL EFFECTS IN THE NATIONAL FIREWORK DISPLAY AT HYDE PARK, 19th JULY, 1919.
CHAPTER VII
FIREWORK MANUFACTURE
The manufacture of fireworks in this country, as an industry distinct from mere firework making, dates from the early part of the eighteenth century. Before that period displays appear to have been generally carried out by the military, or at any rate under the control of artillery or engineer officers. At that time the art was considered to have two distinct branches, civil and military pyrotechny, the latter class naturally attracting most attention during a period when Europe was almost continuously at war, and when firearms had made little progress from the early types.