Mysterious weapon

[Butters]

I've been reading up on some of the real life battles that took part during the English civil war and I've come across something called Fire pikes and I was wondering if anyone had any more information on them.
They seemed to have been used in the Royalist storming of Bristol in mixed groups, some men had the Fire pikes whilst others were issued primitive grenades.
Now the mystery is were they just normal pikes with something like pitch and hay tied to the end or something a lot more potent?
As one description I read does seem to hint at something a lot more substantial,
A Royalist officer Lieutenant-Colonel Littleton galloped along the inside of the Parliamentary line with a fire pike causing panic among the garrison troops who cried out "Wildfire"
Any help on this mystery would be gratefully received.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Butters

[doomedpc]

Good question! I found the following: "The fire-pike (trompa de feugo) was a pike fitted with a bottle of burning combustibles, used both ashore and aboard ship." B.Little, Pirate Hunting, 2010

Plenty of other great stuff in the chapter too!

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MW8wMof8MGgC&pg=PT122&lpg=PT122&dq=what+were+seventeenth+century+fire+pikes&source=bl&ots=fGBMv7Upb3&sig=GkvqTv4G8OQ0xys-CHTk-Cd1M2s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiev5vMssfSAhVoJsAKHapyCl0Q6AEIOzAF#v=onepage&q=what were seventeenth century fire pikes&f=false

 

[Butters]

14 hours ago, doomedpc said:

Good question! I found the following: "The fire-pike (trompa de feugo) was a pike fitted with a bottle of burning combustibles, used both ashore and aboard ship." B.Little, Pirate Hunting, 2010

Plenty of other great stuff in the chapter too!

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MW8wMof8MGgC&pg=PT122&lpg=PT122&dq=what+were+seventeenth+century+fire+pikes&source=bl&ots=fGBMv7Upb3&sig=GkvqTv4G8OQ0xys-CHTk-Cd1M2s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiev5vMssfSAhVoJsAKHapyCl0Q6AEIOzAF#v=onepage&q=what were seventeenth century fire pikes&f=false

 

Thank you this is awesome, its one of the great things about this hobby that you can learn about all this cool stuff which otherwise just seems to get forgotten and now I have this other great sounding weapon that I've never heard of before to track down the brilliantly named Slur Bow which fires brass balls of fire! Now if I can just sneak them past the G.M I might be onto a winner  so thanks again.

Now I wonder if calling my new Pirate character Jerry Lee would be a little too much 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Butters

[Butters]

Shiver me timbers its available on the Kindle, that's my bedtime reading sorted. 

[doomedpc]

Thank you for pointing my way to an interesting arena - 17th century fireworks as weapons!!!

I'm sure there must be a mini-article in this for Rolling Thunder!
 

[Butters]

Cheers, And I hope so as its weird that there seems to be this whole bunch of English Civil War/17th century weapons and tactics which seem to have faded behind all those hedges of Pike and musket smoke.

Did these guys volunteer to carry a Fire pike or did they just draw a short straw? Was the job seen as similar to the poor fellows who set Petards or was it just another weapon to use when the situation demanded it? everything is so vague.

[jagerfury]

Vague, I can work with vague...