Sky-Rockets in Flight

My Fourth of July was a bit out of the ordinary this year. I’m usually at the William Paca House and Garden shortly after 6 am on Independence Day, getting the site ready for the annual Naturalization Ceremony hosted by Historic Annapolis. But this year we had to cancel the event due to the ongoing public health crisis.

Fortunately, we were still able to open up the garden for self-guided, socially-distanced tours from 10 am to 2 pm, and I joined a few other staff members, volunteers, and re-enactors in welcoming almost 100 visitors who came to take in the beautiful historic setting on a sunny summer day. It was a good holiday (the later start was a luxury!), but different from my usual July 4th.

Other things were different this year. There wasn’t a big parade in downtown Annapolis, and no fireworks extravaganza over the harbor. I suppose I could have watched a televised replay of last year’s fireworks over New York, but I guess I just wasn’t too inspired by the prospect of “oohing” and “aahing” over a rerun. Which brings me in a roundabout way to the subject of this week’s blog: fireworks.

In late May I wrote about Peter Gardiner, a puppeteer and magician who brought his traveling show to the West Street theater in 1770. Gardiner advertised that his program included fireworks as special effects in a dramatic scene of model “Ships, Forts, and Batteries, continually firing, until Victory crowns the Conquest.”

Annapolitans who couldn’t satisfy their craving for fireworks with Gardiner’s stage show were undoubtedly thrilled to learn that, weather permitting, a “magnificent Set of FIRE-WORKS, Far exceeding any Performance of the Kind yet shewn in this City” would be exhibited by Francis Armeson on July 14, 1770. Just as Gardiner detailed the progression of his own performance weeks earlier, Armeson laid out the order of his entertainment in an ad in the Maryland Gazette.

The show started precisely at 8:30, when the sun went down. Everything kicked off with “Six Sky-Rockets, which burst in Stars, Snakes, and Maroons.” I can picture pyrotechnic stars and snakes, but I had no idea that, in British usage, a maroon is “a firework that makes a loud bang, used mainly as a signal or warning.” Thanks to Google, now I know.

Armeson had fireworks wheels of several sorts, although I’m not clear on the distinctions between the capricious, illuminated, and curious varieties. There was an illuminated half-moon and a fixed globe, which could represent either the sun or the full moon. Armeson touted his “Diamond Piece of a new Construction” and his “Pigeon on a Line, which will communicate Fire to a beautiful Sun of brilliant Fire.”

The show was punctuated at various points with volleys of six sky-rockets; a total of 24 was needed from beginning to end. Everything wrapped up with an explosion of “Twelve Hand-Granades,” which struck me at first as an excessively violent way to end a public performance and disperse the crowd, but on reflection I’m sure Francis Armeson’s grenades weren’t the same things as the deadly battlefield weapons we think of today.

Let’s hope we can all enjoy a more normal Fourth of July next year, with plenty of sky-rockets in flight. We’ll hold off on the grenades.

You can read the July 12, 1770 issue of the Maryland Gazette starting here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/sc4872/001281/html/m1281-1072.html

Glenn E. Campbell

HA Senior Historian

#history #annapolis #annapolishistory #news #annapolisnews #1770news #colonialnews #colonialhistory #marylandgazette #entertainment #fireworks #fun #independenceday

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