A favorite firearm for celebration purposes was one of the old “Queens Arm” muskets which were common in country communities, being trophies captured from the British during the Revolutionary War. One of these cumbersome flint-lock pieces might be loaded halfway to the muzzle and fired without bursting, and would roar in the discharge in a way highly pleasing to patriotic ears.
It was near the close of the eighteenth century that Chinese firecrackers first came into use in celebrating the American Independence Day. For many years they were used sparingly and only in large cities. They had been known in the New England coast cities ever since the year 1787, when Elias Haskett Derby’s ship of Salem, the first American vessel to engage in deep-water commerce, returned from her voyage to Calcutta, China and Isle of France. Among the things she brought back--more as a curiosity than as an article of cargo--was a consignment of Chinese firecrackers. Their capabilities in aiding the uproar on the Fourth of July were quickly recognized, and thereafter every ship that made the voyage from Massachusetts Bay to India or China brought back firecrackers with the tea, silks and rice. In time, rockets, squibs and torpedoes were included in the consignment, but it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that their use became general in America.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ROCKET FINISHING SHOP]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SHELL FINISHING SHOP]
The time when the more complicated fireworks, which we owe both to Europe and the Orient, came into vogue in this country, no one perhaps could now definitely tell. Their use was known to our seafaring men in the “forties,” for it was in that decade that Capt. Decimus Forthridge, of the American brig “Independence,” showed his Yankee pluck and resource in defeating an attack of Malay pirates with no other armament than fancy fireworks. During his voyage in the East Indies he had laid in a supply of fireworks with which to celebrate the Fourth of July in a manner worthy an American captain. For some reason no ammunition was available for swivels or muskets, when, in the mid-watch of the night, two war proas, deeply laden with armed Malays, were seen coming quickly up on the vessel’s quarter as she lay becalmed off Firabader Point in the Island of Sumatra. The cry of “All hands on deck to repel pirates” brought the crew on deck in haste, but without ammunition the chance that they would beat the enemy off was a long shot compared with the probability that the throat of every man on board would be cut as a preliminary to plundering and scuttling the vessel. Even in their extremity the crew laughed and jeered when the captain ranged them along the quarter rail with boarding pikes and empty muskets in hand to give the enemy the idea that they were ready for business, and then, opening the box of fireworks, he began to shoot rockets and roman candles at the pirates. If the crew laughed, the Malays did not, and when the captain of one of the proas was struck by a rocket, both crafts rested oars and came no nearer. But while Captain Forthridge was attending to these, a third proa came up unobserved under the port quarter, and the first that was known of its presence was the attempt of its occupants to board the vessel by the chains. To make matters worse it was discovered that the paper wrappings of the fireworks in the box were on fire. While the crew with clubbed muskets and boarding pikes kept the Malays outside the rails, Captain Forthridge picked up the blazing box, carried it to the chains, and while the mate and sailors warded the spears and krises from him, dropped it into the proa. The box was blown to pieces the minute it struck, scattering the fireworks through the proa, and with firecrackers snapping and jumping and fiery serpents running round among their bare legs, the Malays chose to take their chances with the sharks, and all hands went overboard into the water at double-quick. A little breeze came up and the brig drew away from the pirates, leaving the two proas to pick up those Malays from the water that the sharks had missed.
