Captain Warner’s Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Invisible Shell

This is not a book review, but an expanded version of an article which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement of 18 July 2025 and records a discovery which contributes substantially to the resolution of a small historical puzzle.

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Human beings are natural believers and that was once an evolutionary advantage. When out hunting with companions if one cries “Snakes in the grass!” then instant reaction is a better survival strategy than chin-stroking reflection on the probability of its truth. This natural credulity survives; without it we would be unmoved by horror movies, tear-jerk novels, and the promises of politicians. Belief just happens to us; we don’t choose it nor is it ever willingly suspended.

Credulity provides space for both pranksters who seek to amuse and charlatans who seek fame and profit. Pranksters may beam as they tell us to our faces that we have been fooled but charlatans do not want to be unmasked. And how do you unmask them anyway? They are often as convincing as stage magicians and those who have fallen for the trick rarely wish to admit it; credulous at the outset they suddenly become sceptics when evidence is put before them.

Fears of death and illness provide fertile ground for false prophets and medical quacks; scientific frauds have been committed by tenured and respected academics. But pulling the wool over the eyes of those responsible for the defence of the realm risks being counted a rather serious offence, and it seems few dare. But the risk has been taken.

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On 17 July 1844 a crowd estimated by the Illustrated London News at between thirty and forty thousand people gathered on the seafront at Brighton in anticipation of a spectacular experiment. A 300 ton decommissioned sailing ship, the John o’ Gaunt, was towed into view and for a very long time not much else was seen to happen. But then at a signal given by independent monitors, Captain Samuel Alfred Warner launched his Invisible Shell, there was an explosion (see the illustration), and within minutes the John o’ Gaunt duly fell apart and sunk as if invisibly hit below the waterline by what we would now call a torpedo. The Illustrated London News provided extensive pictorial coverage and a roll-call of the great and good who had come down from London by the new railway to observe the event, among them Lord Brougham and at least a dozen other Lords; a dozen M.P’s and likewise of men with R.N. after their name; the Bishop of Oxford; directors of the East India Company;  and the Chevalier Benkausen, Russia’s Consul in London, representing one of the countries to which Warner intermittently threatened to take his invention.  Many of those who witnessed the event were impressed, but the official History of Parliament currently takes the view that “the ship had been structurally weakened beforehand and rigged with ropes beneath the surface to effect the deception”.

For over a decade, Captain Warner had been seeking to secure official interest and funding for his work on weapons which would defeat all enemies at sea, writing letters and publishing pamphlets full of dire warnings that Britain’s coasts were currently defenceless against invasion.  He secured at least some followers, including Royal Navy officers and members of Parliament, but there had been failed demonstrations and in addition a complete refusal to allow any Invisible Shell to be examined without a very large payment up front. The Brighton spectacular revived Warner’s fortunes and there was debate in the House of Commons in 1846 and the House of Lords in 1852 where as one of his last official acts the Duke of Wellington, a long-time Warner-sceptic, stripped investigative responsibility from a newly-established committee of their Lordships and transferred it to the scientific hands of the Royal Ordnance. Wikipedia wraps up its version of a very long story saying “With this the matter appears to have been dropped” but in fact the Royal Ordnance did constitute a panel on which Michael Faraday took the lead, interviewing Warner in June 1852. It promptly abandoned its enquiries when he persisted in his habitual refusal to describe the composition of the material which filled his shells. Wellington died in September 1852 and Warner in December 1853.

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But there was an aftermath which offers some kind of resolution. Warner died leaving a woman, apparently his wife, with whom he had been living for many years in Pimlico. There were several children, some now married, no money and quite a lot of debt. A local vicar publicised a fund-raiser for widow and children but had to publish an amended version when he discovered that the woman in Pimlico was not the wife; the legal wife was living in Ashford Kent and now responsible for Warner’s estate, including the very visible and bulky contents of his workshop.

What happened next is recorded in a letter recently picked out of a box at a table top fair in Eastbourne, price three pounds. It is written by one of Warner’s sons-in-law, Thomas Moncas, a watch-maker turned London bookseller in the notorious Holywell Street off the Strand. The recipient is a married daughter of Captain Warner staying with the real Mrs Warner (“Grandma” in the letter) in Ashford. The shells which it describes may still exist.

Transcription

Addressed to: Mrs Viggors care of Mrs Warner Ashford Kent

Datelined: 45 Holywell Street Strand London 13 July 1854; Ashford arrival postmark 14 July

Dear Jane

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has been the result of all the trouble & expense attending the examination of the Shells. There was not anything in a single one, nor could not ever have been in most, as they still contained the “core” from the founders. Nothing could be fairer than the behaviour of Colonel Chalmers & the Gentlemen who assisted & as you now know the worst I will detail all that occurred.

I wrote several notes on the evening that I sent you a short last one. I went from here at 7 the next morg. to Harry & Mr Batten to prevent any mistake. I was back a ½ past 9 & of course had other matters to attend to. At 12 Mr Batten & a Mr Green [the famous balloonist who had assisted Warner at one of his demonstrations] came & also Harry, we had a hurried lunch a glass of ale, took the Steamer down to London Bridge & the Rail at one down to Woolwich raining cats & dogs, & xxxx over by the assistance of Mr Payne to the Laboratory at 5 minutes past 2. The Colonel in the Chair, Mr Abel from the Pharmaceutical Society, Capt. Boxer & another tall Gentleman, after some necessary arrangements &ca we all adjourned to the Shed & there sure enough were the packages containing the Shells. I cannot tell you half the fear hope & care that was taken in moving breaking unlocking the Boxes &ca & handling the contents the Colonel himself warning us “that if those shells contained the explosive material employed by Warner at Brighton, there was enough there to blow up the whole Arsenal”.

For 2 hours & 4o minutes did we examine. Some were broke up with chisel & hammer  & turns out to be an old cannon ball sheathed in copper. Some as proved to be an old Congreve rocket as two long ones this shape one shorter than the other well wedged into 32 pounder Guns & the heads unscrewed they contained nothing. The Balls which were dropped in the Isle of Anglesea [Anglesey] were there …. Some shells this shape this was Gun metal evidently turned on a lathe & was evidently cast

 in a Mould first: a small copper screw was at one end, & round the middle was a band an inch wide divided into 2 halfs was fastened down with 2 screws, weighed about 18 pounds about the size of a 32 pound shot so this was evidently hollow. The band that encircled it was easily taken off but then there was no passage to the inside hollow part. The band rounds its waste covered a cutting about an inch deep thus evidently solid. The screw at end did not open into the center hollow part as far as we could see, so after a deal of fear & consultation the saw was set to work & after penetrating a good inch through solid metal it was apparent the hollow part was reached, on turning it over some black small grans dropped out which were closely examined. They looked like very fine gunpowder & after a good deal of scrutiny turned out to be mixture used by the Moulder to make the mould & all agreed a very ingenious moulder he must have been; but it is evident nothing had ever been inside them, as the modellers core was still there. In fact there was absolutely nothing not a clue nor a shade of a clue to found even a [word lost when seal was broken; could be guess].

We left the Yard at 5 Mr Payne accompanying us to the entrance gate raining as if all were coming down at once, had dinner of which we had a great need & returned to Town bidding Mr Batten & Mr Green good-bye at the Essex pier. Harry & I joining Emma & Polly telling them the same tale I have told you only a good deal more.

Now Grandma [Mrs Warner] must send wish what is to be done with the Shells &ca, the Colonel will send them up in a few days. Harry [one of Warner’s sons] wants one of those with a hook in, that fell from the Balloon, to suspend from his room ceiling. Any directions you give shall be attended to – whether you wish them sold or kept, or sent to you. We are all pretty well, considering. I intended to have written to you from Woolwich, but the Post Office closes there for country letters at 4 & we did not get clear from the yard ‘till 5 so it was no use to write there. If nothing else results at all events it has not been for want of trying. But this does not prove there is no secret, it only proves that there was no evidence is those particular shells.

 Thomas Moncas

 

 

 

Catherine Nixey Heresy

 

It's a long time since I posted a review of a new book but this one is so good that it prompts me to put aside preoccupation with finishing my current project. Nearly everything in this book was new to me. Catherine Nixey has found the right style and tone to write about the early Church of Rome as it established itself as "the greatest organized persecuting force in human history" - a phrase she takes from Geoffrey de Ste. Croix. She does this by narrating the histories and often violent fates, as far as we can know them, of those early versions of Christianity which found themselves defined as "heresies" by that Roman version which focussed itself on alliance with secular power, wealth accumulation, and the pleasures of ostentation, pomp and the flesh - a set of choices far from dead not only in Rome but in Canterbury too. 

Despite a lifelong sideline interest in religion, both as histories and as theologies, I knew almost nothing of what Nixey writes about and that, as she might be the first to point out, is just as my English state schooling intended. Watered down to not much more than prayers, hymns, carols and nativity plays it never suggested alternatives, that there might be other stories. It's true, however, that so successful was the dominant church's  suppression of alternative pasts, including as recorded in books which were burnt,  that it is only in my lifetime that some of those other histories have been at least partially recovered, notably from the 1945 discovery in Egypt of the Gnostic Gospels. But what are traditionally called the Apocrypha, excluded from canonical Bibles, had been around for a very long time before that.

Nixey establishes her case with lively, caustic, and well-crafted short histories and striking examples. Her display of alternative versions of the Nativity scene is perhaps the most striking as is the fact that some of those scenes pre-date the Christian version. Virgins having babies with remarkable powers was not a new idea. There are other things too: the "Three Wise Men" of school nativity plays are the creation of a dubious translation; they are Magi and if you want to translate that, then magicians or sorcerers would be obvious choices. But in this 1840s folk art version of De Tre Wise Man  from Dalarna in Sweden - I bought the postcard there in 1964 -  they are local notables who ride horses not camels; they are the local go-to people for the seal of approval; but the ox and the ass are there, as in the best English versions:

Catherine Nixey is a classicist by training and may wish to stay close to the period she is most  familiar with. But if she ventured into the more recent past, the early history of the Church of England (and of Scotland) is also that of an organised persecuting force busily rooting out heretics and  heresies. The last person to be executed for Blasphemy in Britain was the twenty-year old Edinburgh student Thomas Aikenhead, hanged in 1697. The indictment against him (which can be found at his Wikipedia page) shows he was familiar with early criticisms of Christianity and, in particular, its associations with magic.  

Today it is only continued state support for the Established Church with its Bench of Bishops, accumulated  wealth, and continuing hold on the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham which lifts it above the status of not much more than a middle-class hobby prone to the usual jealousies and in-fighting. The Roman Catholic church is another matter and will remain so until Italy repudiates the Lateran treaty and incorporates the Vatican City State into its national territory. It would then be able to order the archives opened.