Prince Rupert of the Rhine

Wikipedia:

Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland, KG, PC, FRS  (27 December 1619 – 9 December 1682) was an English-German army officer, admiral, scientist, and colonial governor. He first rose to prominence as a Royalist cavalry commander during the English Civil War.[a] Rupert was the third son of the German Prince Frederick V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King James VI and I of England and Scotland.

Prince Rupert had a varied career. He was a soldier as a child, fighting alongside Dutch forces against Habsburg Spain during the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), and against the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). Aged 23, he was appointed commander of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War, becoming the archetypal “Cavalier” of the war and ultimately the senior Royalist general. He surrendered after the fall of Bristol and was banished from England. He served under King Louis XIV of France against Spain, and then as a Royalist privateer in the Caribbean Sea. Following the Restoration, Rupert returned to England, becoming a senior English naval commander during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and Third Anglo-Dutch War, and serving as the first governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He died in England in 1682, aged 62.

. . .After Rupert’s retirement from active seafaring in around 1674, he was able to spend more time engaged in scientific research and became credited with many inventions and discoveries, although some subsequently turned out to be the innovative introduction of European inventions into England. Rupert converted some of the apartments at Windsor Castle to a luxury laboratory, complete with forges, instruments, and raw materials, from where he conducted a range of experiments.

Rupert had already become the third founding member of the scientific Royal Society, being referred to by contemporaries as a “philosophic warrior”, and guided the Society as a Councillor during its early years. Very early on in the Society’s history, Rupert demonstrated Prince Rupert’s drops to King Charles II and the Society, glass teardrops which explode when the tail is cracked; although credited with their invention at the time, later interpretations suggest that he was instead responsible for the introduction of an existing European discovery into England. He demonstrated a new device for lifting water at the Royal Society, and received attention for his process for “painting colours on marble, which, when polished, became permanent”. During this time, Rupert also formulated a mathematical question concerning the paradox that a cube can pass through a slightly smaller cube; Rupert questioned how large a cube had to be in order to fit. The question of Prince Rupert’s cube was first solved by the Dutch mathematician Pieter Nieuwland. Rupert was also known for his success in breaking cypher codes.

Many of Rupert’s inventions were military. After designing the Rupertinoe naval gun, Rupert erected a watermill on Hackney Marshes for a revolutionary method of boring guns; however, his secret died with him, and the enterprise failed. Rupert enjoyed other military problems, and took to manufacturing gun locks; he devised both a gun that fired multiple rounds at high speed, and a “handgun with rotating barrels”. He is credited with the invention of a form of gunpowder, which when demonstrated to the Royal Society in 1663, had a force of over ten times that of regular powder; a better method for using gunpowder in mining; and a torpedo. He also developed a form of grapeshot for use by artillery. Rupert also focussed on naval inventions: he devised a balancing mechanism to allow improved quadrant measurements at sea, and produced a diving engine for retrieving objects on the ocean floor. While recovering from his trepanning treatment Rupert set about inventing new surgical equipment to improve future operations.

. . .Prince Rupert’s memory is well attested in the geography of Canada. The lands of the Hudson’s Bay Company, being all the land drained by rivers flowing into Hudson Bay, were known as Rupert’s Land from 1670 until 1870. The Anglican Diocese of Rupert’s Land, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is the relic of this period, as are Prince Rupert Avenue, Rupert Avenue, and Rupertsland Avenue in Winnipeg.

Historian Professor Ronald Hutton on Prince Rupert and the English Civil War.