British Batteries

The rockets fired at Chalmette were Sir William Congreve's design. He began developing them in 1804 from Mysorean rockets, and by 1806 the case was sheet iron, with a long wooden stick and warheads that could explode, scatter shrapnel or burn. Captain Henry Lane's rocket troop sailed for New Orleans with 40 artillerymen and 500 rockets. Their reputation outran their aim: at 1,200 yards a rocket might land tens of yards off line, hit a point target less than five percent of the time, and fail in as many as one launch in five.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chalmette Battlefield — 0.2 mi
  The ground of the January 8, 1815 Battle of New Orleans, beside Chalmette National Cemetery and the site of Fazendeville, a freedpeople's community founded in 1867 and bought out in the 1960s.
• The Cabildo — 4.6 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 4.6 mi
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 4.7 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.

More markers nearby

• Chalmette National Cemetery (the Freedmen's Cemetery) — steps away
• Fazendeville (the Village) — steps away
• After the Battle — 0.3 mi
• Pakenham's Fall — 0.3 mi