Copperass Bay and Gunpowder - industrial chemist needed

dylanwinter

dylanwinter

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www.keepturningleft.co.uk
I was told by the locals that Copperas bay was named after the copperas nodules collected along the beach.

it turns out that they are nothing to do with copper but are nodules of iron salts

I now know that it was an incredibly long industrial process tied up with the production of several crucial chemical stocks and was vital to the gunpowder industry - and hence the power of the royal navy and the British empire.

has anyone in YBW land any information - in particular..

1/ how were the nodules formed and how did they get into the sand deposits

2/ How the heck could anyone develop such a long process - 7 years from beginning to end

3/ How much government money was going into the industry - after all these were times of empire - no gunpowder - no effective royal navy

Dylan winter
 
Cant answer any of your questions but theres a Copperass Buoy near Lynmouth in the Bristol Channel I wondered what the word meant.
 
copperas and dinosaurs

graham said:
Cant answer any of your questions but theres a Copperass Buoy near Lynmouth in the Bristol Channel I wondered what the word meant.
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the name appears all around the coast -

and I am reasonably certain that there was a huge governement project involved in developing the industry - there was a desperate strategic need to ensure that we could produce gunpowder from our own resources.

I was also told that the copperas nodules were once dynosaur turds

but I have not been able to find any confirmation of that

Dylan
 
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jhr said:
I don't know about Government money but I suspect it was non-existent. It was all done by private enterprise and learned society initiatives (such as the RSA's tree-planting scheme) in those days.
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Au contraire mon ami. During the Napoleonic wars and indeed the preceeding century the proportion of GDP (as we would now characterise it) going to support the Navy was something phenomenal, more than 50% according to some sources. Indeed the industrial revolution was in large part driven by the long-term war economy, funded by government borrowing and income tax. Thus as Keynes was later to demonstrate public expenditure was and is a source of economic growth and not some kind of burden holding back freedom-loving entrepreneurs.
 
I think there is some confusion here. Coprolites (fossil poo) were used in fertilizer and munitions. see http://factoidz.com/httpsocybertycomhistoryhow-coprolite-helped-win-the-first-world-war/

I can't see how Copperas would relate to explosives, but would be happy to be informed.

<edit>Of course, by simply mentioning explosives in the thread we are probably all on some anti-tourist list somewhere now and it will only be a matter of time before we get our control orders</edit>
 
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dylanwinter said:
the name appears all around the coast -

and I am reasonably certain that there was a huge governement project involved in developing the industry - there was a desperate strategic need to ensure that we could produce gunpowder from our own resources.

I was also told that the copperas nodules were once dynosaur turds

but I have not been able to find any confirmation of that

Dylan
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Have you tried contacting the RSPB wardens at the Stour Estuary reserve? They might know something.
 
KenMcCulloch said:
Au contraire mon ami. During the Napoleonic wars and indeed the preceeding century the proportion of GDP (as we would now characterise it) going to support the Navy was something phenomenal, more than 50% according to some sources. Indeed the industrial revolution was in large part driven by the long-term war economy, funded by government borrowing and income tax. Thus as Keynes was later to demonstrate public expenditure was and is a source of economic growth and not some kind of burden holding back freedom-loving entrepreneurs.
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I agree with your Keynesian analysis :)

On further reflection, I'm being a bit dense here: I used to live about half a mile from what was originally the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey, which I now learn was originally opened in the early 1500s. So there probably was a bit of public sector stuff going on during the Napoleonic Wars .... :D
 
the fog starts to clear

shmoo said:
I think there is some confusion here. Coprolites (fossil poo) were used in fertilizer and munitions. see http://factoidz.com/httpsocybertycomhistoryhow-coprolite-helped-win-the-first-world-war/

I can't see how Copperas would relate to explosives, but would be happy to be informed.

<edit>Of course, by simply mentioning explosives in the thread we are probably all on some anti-tourist list somewhere now and it will only be a matter of time before we get our control orders</edit>
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excellent - righto copperas and coprolites - another source of confusion

that helps a lot

since posting here I received the following email

Dear Dylan

I don't know which River Stour - there are several - but no matter.

It's possible that sulphur (for gunpowder) was refined from the nodules of iron pyrites (FES2 - can't do subscripts on Outlook Express) found on beaches at places like Tankerton and Minster-in-Sheppey in Kent. However the main purpose of refining was to produce copperas, which was used as a mordant to fix dyes. There is no copper in copperas, but iron pyprites was called fool's gold because it looks as though it's gold-bearing.

In about 1560 a Flemish immigrant, Matthew Falconer (names presumably anglicised), at Queenborough, near Minster, won a patent from the Crown to extract sulphur from iron pyrites, but to what extent he did so isn't known. Similarly Thomas Mendfield, a Faversham resident, may have extract sulphur from the iron pyrites at Tankerton.

This would have been handy in either case, as gunpowder was probably being made at Faversham (between the two places) at the time - the first actual record we have is from 1573.

However in practice most sulphur was imported from Sicily. Some of it was refined on-site, but most was refined at the powder factories.

This is an off-the-cuff response. We sell a book about the Tankerton copperas industry, which also discusses the industry in general. Without checking, I think the iron pyrites were washed down onto the beaches from the London Clay cliffs in both Tankerton and Minster - they erode all the time.

Best wishes

Arthur


As a hack the web is a brilliant place for finding out stuff
 
Copperas is Ferrous Sulphate. Ferrous Sulphate will produce Sulphur Trioxide by destructive distillation, and this can be dissolved in water to produce concentrated sulphuric acid. It happens that the water of crystallization of ferrous sulphate is near the right proportion to produce sulphuric acid without the addition of water.

Ferrous Sulphate is soluble, and so does not occur in nature. However, it can be produced from Iron Pyrites nodules - this link tells how - basically, the iron pyrites are allowed to weather under aerobic conditions.

Sulphuric acid is a starting point for many industrial processes, including small scale production of nitric acid, a precursor for many explosives.
 
Italian sources

Does anyone know about government patents

were they just a license to extract or did they also include a guaranteed price for the end product?

the process took six years - I would guess you would need a few promises about future markets if you were to start a business with such a long payback time

The dependence on Italy must have made the governement very nervous - what with the spanish influece on entrance to the med

Dylan
 
more on the industry from arthur

Dear Dylan

Yes, it has always puzzled me how a continuous supply of sulphur was obtained from Sicily, even in times of war, not to mention piracy etc.

In the early powder industry it was only the sulphur that had to be imported. The charcoal was readily made on site, from alder, dogwood, willlow etc, or could be 'imported' (in the case of Faversham) from the Weald of Kent.

The saltpetre was more difficult. It had to be made from animal droppings, particularly pigeon/dove droppings. Again there was a Royal patent, or rather monopoly, for supply, and the patentee had the right to enter any building anywhere to take suitable raw material. He could of course sub-contract his monopoly rights. The processing, in open-air 'plantations' was messy, as you can imagine.

Later (I think from the C18) saltpetre was imported from India, and later still from Chile. A chap from Wellingborough who came to teach in Faversham was lured away to manage a local factory and then lured away again to manage a saltpetre plant in Chile. They got on their bikes in those days. (We sell a book on this, too).

The copperas / sulphur patent was just a licence - there was no guarantee of purchase.

Generally I think that gunpowder manufacture in the UK was small-scale in the C16 and gradually grew throughout the C17, C18 and C19 till the product was to a considerable extent superseded by the high explosives (the first was guncotton, invented in 1846, and first made here a year later).

Of our three powder factories one (which started c 1685) sold much of its product to the East India Company - so saltpetre in, powder out. So also, without being too squeamish, without this output no Raj, no English as the lingua franca in India, and no Test Cricket annihilations of England by India. As it happens Test cricket was introduced to India by a cricketer who lived 4 miles from Faversham.

Best wishes from your friendly purveyor of useless information.

Arthur
 
KenMcCulloch said:
Au contraire mon ami. During the Napoleonic wars and indeed the preceeding century the proportion of GDP (as we would now characterise it) going to support the Navy was something phenomenal, more than 50% according to some sources. Indeed the industrial revolution was in large part driven by the long-term war economy, funded by government borrowing and income tax. Thus as Keynes was later to demonstrate public expenditure was and is a source of economic growth and not some kind of burden holding back freedom-loving entrepreneurs.
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At the risk of thread-drift, it's tempting to wonder about a similar Keynesian analysis on GDP during Gulf/Afghan Wars i.e. the current situation.

In the Napoleonic era, is it valid to assume that (a) 100% of the expenditure went to UK industries, and (b) that meant manufacturing industries?

A lot may hinge on what we call "industry" now. e.g. the public expenditure on the arms industry might count, but it's not all in the UK. Would healthcare and social service count as "industry"?

(Discuss)
 
Warlike English

One thing that has really been driven home by my trip around our coasts is that I come from a very warlike nation.

For much of our history it would be hard to say where the hand of the state stopped and free trade took over - our power was exterted through our ships and the mastery of other peoples ports.

To see some of that history unfold during the journey has been wonderful.

Dylan
 
Copperas

According to Ken Rickwood's excellent book "Stour Secrets", which is all about the eponymous Essex/Suffolf estuary, the copperas in this river's Copperas Bay is formed from fossilised wood which becomes pyritised. It was processed to make ferrous sulphate or green vitriol, used for dyes, tanning and inks.
 
mo mention of the gunpowder connection then - strange

Jo Burge said:
According to Ken Rickwood's excellent book "Stour Secrets", which is all about the eponymous Essex/Suffolf estuary, the copperas in this river's Copperas Bay is formed from fossilised wood which becomes pyritised. It was processed to make ferrous sulphate or green vitriol, used for dyes, tanning and inks.
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why did he leave out the gunpowder

anyone know any other things about the stour that I should know before I start editing

D
 
Copperas

He makes no mention of 'powder. The copperas is prerserved in clay and reacts immediately on contact with o2 in the air; the process Rickwood describes consists of dumping a load of the stuff along with scrap iron and leaving the action of air and water produce ferrous sulphate solution. No mention of H2SO4 being the intended end-product.
I've done a fair bit of chemistry myself (even to the extent of burning off my eyebrows and hair in the lab) and agree that H2SO4 is fantastically useful stuff. But I guess its manufacture was probably from burning sulphur.
There's an awful lot to else to tell about the Stour. Where do you start? It's jolly muddy and last year we found a wooly-mammoth bone in it....
 
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