THE STORY OF THE PARACHUTE.
In giving an account of the Umbrella, it would not be right to omit
mentioning another, and far from legitimate use in which it has been
employed by notoriety-hunting _artistes_--we allude to the
Parachute; and a short narration of its origin and progress may not
be uninteresting to our readers.
The Parachute commonly in use is nothing more or less than a huge
Umbrella, presenting a surface of sufficient dimension to experience
from the air a resistance equal to the weight of descent, in moving
through the fluid at a velocity not exceeding that of the shock which
a person can sustain without danger or injury. It is made of silk or
cotton. To the outer edge cords are fastened, of about the same
length as the diameter of the machine (24 to 28 feet). A centre cord
is attached to the apex and meets the cords from the margin, acting,
in fact, as the stick of the Umbrella. The machine is thus kept
expanded during descent. The car is fastened to the centre cord, and
the whole attached to the balloon in such a manner that it may be
readily and quickly detached, either by cutting a string, or pulling
a trigger. Consequently, in the East, where the Umbrella has been
from the earliest ages in familiar use, it appears to have been
occasionally employed by vaulters, to enable them to jump safely from
great heights. Father Loubère, in his curious account of Siam,
relates, that a person famous in that country for his dexterity, used
to divert the King and Court by the extraordinary leaps he took,
having two Umbrellas with long slender handles, fastened to his
girdle. In 1783 M. le Normand demonstrated the utility of the
Parachute; by lifting himself down from the windows of a high house
at Lyons. His idea was that it might be made a sort of fire-escape.
Blanchard was the first person who constructed a Parachute to act as
a safety-guard to the aeronaut in case of any accident. During an
excursion he made from Lille, in 1785, when he traversed, without
stopping, a distance of 300 miles, he let down a Parachute with a
basket fastened to it containing a dog. This he suffered to fall from
a great height, and it reached the ground in safety.
The first Parachute descent from a balloon, however, was made by
Jacques Garnerin, on the 22nd of October, 1797, in the Park of
Monceau. De la Lande, the celebrated astronomer, has furnished a
detailed and highly interesting account of this foolish experiment.
Garnerin resided in London during the short peace of 1802, and made
two ascents with his balloon, in the second of which he let himself
fall, at an amazing height, with a Parachute of 23 feet diameter. He
started from an enclosure near North Audley Street, and descended
after having been seven or eight minutes in the air. After cutting
himself away, he floated over Marylebone and Somers Town, and fell in
a field near St. Pancras Old Church. The oscillation was so great,
that he was thrown out of the Parachute, and narrowly escaped death.
He seemed a good deal frightened, and said that the peril was too
great for endurance. One of the stays of the machine having given
way, his danger was increased. The next person who tried this
dangerous experiment was his niece, Eliza Garnerin, who descended
several times in safety. Her Parachute had a large orifice in the
top, in order to check the oscillation, and this appears to have been
tolerably successful.
The next experimentalist was a person of the name of Cocking, who
ended his days in a manner unworthy his talents, through a series of
lamentable mistakes. His Parachute was constructed on the opposite
principle, of a wedge-like form, and was intended to cleave through
the air, instead of offering a resistance to it. It has not yet been
proved that the principle was wrong, but the defect lay in the
weakness of the materials employed in the formation of the Parachute.
On the 29th July, 1837, Mr. Cocking ascended in his new Parachute,
attached to the Great Nassau Balloon. Mr. Cocking liberated himself
from the balloon, the Parachute collapsed and fell, at a frightful
rate, into a field near Lea, where poor Cocking was found with an
awful wound on his right temple. He never spoke, but died almost
immediately afterwards. It is much to be regretted that the descent
was ever allowed to take place. The aeronauts themselves were for
some time in a state of imminent peril. Immediately the Parachute was
cut away, the balloon ascended with frightful velocity, owing to the
ascending power it necessarily gained by being freed from a weight of
nearly 500 pounds; and had it not been that its occupants applied
their mouths to the air-bags previously provided, they must have been
suffocated by the escaping gas. When the re-action took place, the
balloon had lost its buoyancy, and fell, rather than descended, to
the ground.
Mr. Hampton was the next person who attempted the experiment, and
made three descents in a Parachute in succession without injury.
Undeterred by the awful fate of his predecessor, this gentleman
determined on making a Parachute descent which should prove the
correctness of the theory, and the Montpellier Gardens at Cheltenham
were selected as the scene of the exploit. Owing to the censure which
was attached to the proprietors of the Vauxhall Gardens, for
permitting docking's ascent, the owners of the Gardens at Cheltenham
would not suffer the experiment to be made, and Mr. Hampton was
obliged to have recourse to stratagem. As he was permitted to display
his Parachute in the manner he intended to use it, the idea suddenly
flashed across his mind that, he could carry out his long-nursed
wishes. He suddenly cut the rope which kept him down, and went off,
to the astonishment of the spectators: the last cheering sound that
reached him being--"He will be killed to a dead certainty!"
After attaining an altitude of nearly two miles, Mr. Hampton
proceeded to cut the rope that held him attached to the balloon. He
paused for a second or two, as he remembered that it would soon be
life or death with him, but at length drew his knife across the rope.
The first feelings he experienced were both unpleasant and alarming;
his eyes and the top of his head appeared to be forced upwards, but
this passed off in a few seconds, and his feelings subsequently
became pleasant, rather than disagreeable.
So steady and slow was the descent that the Parachute appeared to be
stationary. Mr. Hampton remembered that a bag of ballast was fastened
beneath the car, he stooped over and upset the sand, he also noted by
his watch the time he occupied in descending. The earth seemed coming
up to him rapidly; the Parachute indicated its approach to _terra,
firma_ by a slight oscillation, and he presently struck the ground
in the centre of a field, where he was first welcomed by a sheep,
which stared at this visitor from the clouds in utter amazement. Mr.
Hampton repeated the experiment twice in London, though on both
occasions with considerable danger to himself, the first time falling
on a tree in Kensington Gardens, the second on a house, which threw
him out of the basket.
After this experiment there was a lull in the Parachute folly until
some twenty years ago, when Madame Poitevin startled the Metropolis
from its propriety by her perilous escapes both in life and limb.
Although considerable ingenuity was displayed in the plan of
expanding the Parachute by the sudden discharge of gas from the
balloon; still the very fact of a woman being exposed to such danger
by her husband, will, we trust, hereafter prevent Englishmen from
countenancing such an exhibition by their presence.