Best scene: Battle of New Orleans congreve rockets

My favorite scene in the 1958 movie, THE BUCCANEER is the climatic Battle for New Orleans. And in that scene I enjoyed the scene of the the British rocket battery launching its congreve rockets over the American lines. Cecil B. DeMille directed this movie and he spared no expense. That scene must have cost a fortune when you take into account real rockets were employed. I have a thing for rockets in warfare and this is the best depiction of war rockets in military history. (I will digress here) The American military was lukewarm on military rocket use. There was some but little employment of military rockets in the Civil War. During WWII the U.S. Army deployed only one rocket battalion, the 18th Field Artillery. Some M4 Sherman tanks employed rows of 4.5 inch rockets mounted on top of the turrets. The U.S. Navy made extensive use of rocket launcher ships using the LCM hull design. You see these rocket ships blasting off rockets over Iwo Jima and Okinawa on old, black-and-white newsreels, but little is known about these rocket ships. There was the widely used 2.75 inch rocket bazooka in WWII, ineffective against the latest German tanks and the Russian T34 medium tank in Korea, but the 3.5 inch super bazooka rocket launcher was very effective.
Back to THE BUCCANEER. I almost felt disappointed when the Americans dropped just one explosive cannonball right into the middle of the Brits' congreve rocket stockpile. What foolish Brit commander unwisely allowed all the rockets to be stockpiled into one location, unprotected, and just scant yards behind the rocket launchers! Of course this may be just Hollywood. I don't know how the actual layout of the British rocket battery looked in the real battle. But I just relished watching all those rockets shrieking straight overhead the American lines, causing little actual damage but scarey, nonetheless. I mention, little actual damage, but that's a relative term. The British congreve rockets mounted an explosive warhead encased in a thin iron sheet tube. One those rockets exploding nearby would be equivalent to a modern grenade launcher, the type mounted beneath an automatic rifle like the M203. It could definitely kill or wound. But the rocket's warhead was not nearly as large as an exploding cannon shell so relatively the damage was less.

TRIVIA: Cotton bales were not actually employed in the Americans' earthworks redoubts outside New Orleans. But the legend persists today that cotton bales were used. Bear in mind that cotton bales were highly combustible. Andrew Jackson was smarter than to allow flammable material stocked on his front lines.
The peace Treaty of Ghent had been signed in Ghent, Belgium one week before, but this is before the age of the telegraph, radio, and internet. News of the armistice was still en route from Europe in the form of written documents on a ship still on the Atlantic Ocean! The Americans would nonetheless rejoice at their greatest victory over the invading British redcoats for the next century. News of the peace treaty arriving over a week later boosted a perception (incorrectly) that the victory at New Orleans led to the British agreeing to an armistice. But that urban legend persists today. It propelled major general Andrew Jackson into wildly acclaimed celebrity status, culminating in his election to the Presidency years later.