FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST
Unfortunately the death of Pilâtre de Rozier was but the first of a
series of fatal accidents which marred the early years of the history
of ballooning. Shortly afterwards another French aeronaut, going up
in too shallow a car, fell overboard when at a great height and was
killed. A little later Count Zambeccari, an Italian, ascended in a
hot-air balloon, which, on coming near the earth, became entangled in
a tree. The furnace it carried set fire to the silk. To escape from
the flames, the Count leapt to the ground and was killed on the spot.
A few years after, Madame Blanchard, wife of the man who first crossed
the English Channel, made a night ascent from Paris with a number of
fireworks hung from the car. These, in some way, ignited the balloon,
which fell to the ground, killing the unfortunate lady in its fall.
On the other hand, many miraculous escapes are on record. One of the
earliest balloonists spent the night alone aloft in the midst of a
terrific thunder-storm, with the lightning flashing all around him,
and yet descended in safety when morning broke. M. Garnerin, a famous
French aeronaut of this date, also was lost in a storm. His balloon
became unmanageable, and borne to earth was dashed against a mountain
side, the occupant losing consciousness, until the balloon, which had
ascended again, brought him safely down once more many miles away.
A marvellous escape took place in 1808, when two Italians ascended in
a gas balloon from Padua and attained a great height, estimated as
approaching 30,000 feet. Here the balloon burst, and came precipitately
to the ground; and yet, despite the terrific fall, the aeronauts
escaped with their lives. The explanation of this seeming impossibility
was, no doubt, the tendency which a balloon, emptied of its gas,
possesses to form a natural parachute. During a rapid fall the lower
part of the silk will, if loose, collapse into the upper portion to
form a kind of open umbrella, and thus very effectually break the
descent. Many balloonists have owed their safety in similar accidents
to this fortunate fact.
The bursting of balloons when at high altitudes has already been
referred to as happening on several previous occasions. It is a danger
which is always present when a balloon is aloft, unless due precautions
are taken, and the neglect of these precautions has probably led
to more ballooning accidents than any other cause. The explanation
is simply the varying pressure exerted upon the bag of gas by the
weight of the atmosphere. When an inflated balloon is resting upon
the ground, the vast ocean of air above it is pressing upon it with a
weight of approximately fifteen pounds to the square inch, and it is
this pressure which prevents the enclosed gas from expanding beyond
a certain limit. The balloon then rises high into the air, where the
weight of atmosphere pressing upon it is much diminished. The higher it
rises the less the pressure becomes, and the gas it holds soon expands
so much that, unless a vent is provided for it, the balloon will burst.
At the present day the neck of a balloon is always left wide open when
the balloon is in the air, to allow of the escape of the gas during the
ascent.
A perilous adventure befell Mr. Sadler, an English aeronaut, in 1812,
whilst attempting to cross the Irish Channel. He started from Dublin
with a wind which he hoped would carry him to Liverpool, but had gone
only a short distance when he discovered a rent, which seemed to be
increasing, in the silk of his balloon. Climbing the rigging with
difficulty, he contrived to tie up the hole with his neckcloth. He was
by this time over the sea, and having passed near the Isle of Man,
found himself, as evening was approaching, close to the coast of North
Wales. Here he endeavoured to seek a landing, but just at the critical
moment the wind shifted, as it frequently does in this treacherous
Channel, and he was quickly blown out to sea again. There he remained
for another hour vainly endeavouring to make the land, and then,
despairing of the attempt and seeing five ships beneath him, he came
boldly down on the water, trusting they would come to his assistance.
But he came down too far away from them, and one and all continued
their course and took no notice. He was obliged, therefore, to throw
out ballast and to rise into the air once more. The sun was now
set upon the level of the water, but as the brave aeronaut rose he
beheld it once more above the horizon, and was cheered by its beams.
Presently he saw beneath him three more vessels, which signalled their
willingness to help him, and he immediately came down on the sea again
as close to them as he could. But the wind, now rising fast, caught the
half empty silk of the balloon as it touched the waves, and bore it
along over the surface of the water at a terrific pace; and although
the vessels came after in full pursuit, they were unable to overtake it.
Mr. Sadler then dropped his grappling-iron to act as a drag, and this
not proving sufficient, took off his clothes and tied them to the iron
as a further expedient. Still the vessels failed to overhaul him as he
sped over the waves, and he was at length forced to let out a quantity
of the gas still remaining, and so cripple the balloon. But this was
a dangerous move, for the car now instantly sank; and the unfortunate
man had to clutch the hoop and then the netting, to keep himself above
water. Chilled and exhausted, and frequently plunged beneath the waves,
he was soon at the point of death; for the nearest ship, though now
close at hand, fearful of becoming entangled in the netting, still held
off. Fainting as he was, Mr. Sadler yet managed to summon strength to
call to the sailors to run their bowsprit through the balloon to stop
its course, and this being done, he was hauled on board more dead than
alive.
Five years passed, and no more attempts were made to cross the
treacherous Irish Sea, until Mr. Sadler’s own son, Mr. Windham Sadler,
determined himself to make the attempt which had so nearly cost his
father his life. Choosing the same starting-ground for his venture, he
left Dublin on the longest day of 1817, and, fortune favouring him,
reached the Welsh coast not far from Holyhead, after a voyage of 70
miles, lasting five hours. This was the last attempt to cross the
Irish Channel, until November 1902, when the Rev. J. M. Bacon and Mr.
Percival Spencer, starting from Douglas, in the Isle of Man, landed in
a rocky glen 15 miles beyond Dumfries, after a journey of 80 miles,
accomplished in three hours. Brave Mr. Windham Sadler unhappily lost
his life in a terrible balloon accident in 1824.
But a more celebrated balloonist, perhaps the most famous of all, had
by this time come to the fore--Charles Green, fitly called “The Father
of English Aeronautics.” It was he who first introduced a new method
of balloon-filling, which quickly revolutionised the whole art and
practice. This was nothing more or less than the employment of ordinary
household or coal gas for inflation, in place of the costly and
dangerous hydrogen.
While balloons were inflated only with pure hydrogen--for the uncertain
and dangerous method of filling with hot air was soon almost entirely
abandoned--no great strides could be made in the art of sailing the
skies. The filling of a large balloon eighty years ago cost no less
than £250, and few people could be found willing to provide so much
money for such a purpose. Coal gas, however, was by then to be found
in every town of any consequence; and it was Green’s suggestion that
though this gas might be greatly inferior to pure hydrogen in buoyancy
or “lifting power,” it yet contained a sufficient quantity of hydrogen
in it for all ordinary aeronautical purposes.
The coronation of King George the Fourth was the occasion chosen
by Green to put his new scheme to the test and fill a balloon with
coal gas. The experiment was entirely successful, and henceforward
balloon ascents became much commoner throughout the world, for Green’s
discovery reduced the cost of filling tenfold, and the trouble and
anxiety a hundredfold. Green himself became one of the most famous men
of his day, and lived to make a thousand ascents, some of them of the
most daring and exciting description.
[Illustration: THE GREAT NASSAU BALLOON.]
The most celebrated event in all his career, however, was the voyage
of the Great Nassau Balloon, in November 1836. This voyage created a
tremendous sensation at the time, and has always been considered one of
the most adventurous enterprises in the whole history of aeronautics.
How it came about was as follows:--
The managers of the Vauxhall Gardens, London, had made, with Mr.
Green’s assistance, a very large and fine balloon of crimson silk,
which stood eighty feet high and held 90,000 cubic feet of gas, and
which would carry, if needed, more than twenty persons. After it was
made the proprietors proposed exhibiting it in Paris, and there was
some question of how this valuable and fragile property had best be
conveyed so far. Mr. Hollond, a young gentleman of considerable wealth,
and a great lover of adventure, at once came forward, and proposed
to take the balloon to the Continent by sky. His offer was accepted,
and to make the ascent more noteworthy, it was decided to start from
London and cross the sea by night, making as long a voyage as possible,
although it was already winter time, and such a venture had never
before been made.
Preparations were at once commenced. The passengers were limited to
three--Mr. Green, who was to manage the balloon, Mr. Hollond, and his
friend Mr. Monck Mason. A ton of ballast was to be carried, provisions
for a whole fortnight were laid in, and, since none could tell to
within a thousand miles or more where they might be drifted, passports
to every kingdom in Europe were obtained.
They left London late one November day, and, rising under a north-west
wind, skirted the north of Kent. Passing presently over Canterbury,
they wrote a courteous message to the mayor, and dropped it in a
parachute. Some time later, when the short autumn twilight was
beginning to wane, they saw beneath them the gleam of white waves, and
knew they had reached the boundary of the hitherto much-dreaded sea.
Immediately afterwards they entered a heavy sea fog, which hid all
things from their sight, and darkness and dead silence reigned around.
[Illustration: THE VOYAGE ACROSS THE CHANNEL.]
This lasted for fifty minutes, when they emerged from the cloud and
found the bright lights of Calais beneath them. It was then quite dark,
and they sped on through the night over unknown towns and villages
whose lights gleamed fainter and fewer as the time went on. Then once
again they entered the fog-bank, and for long hours no sign or sound of
earth reached them more.
As the night wore on they suddenly had a startling and alarming
experience. Their balloon, which had been flying near the earth, was
presently lightened by the discharge of ballast, and rose to a height
of 12,000 feet into the air. Immediately afterwards, when all around
was wrapped in the deepest silence and the blackest darkness, there
came the sound of a sharp explosion from over their heads, followed
by a rustling of the silk, and immediately the car received a violent
jerk. The same thing was repeated again and yet again, and it is small
wonder that the awful conviction then seized the party that there,
in the darkness, in the dead of night, at that fearful height, their
balloon had burst, and they were falling headlong to the ground. Great
indeed must have been their relief when they found this was not the
case, and discovered the real reason of their alarm.
It is the tendency of a balloon when flying near the ground to assume
an elongated or pear shape; and while their balloon was in this
position the netting, which was wet with dew, had frozen hard and
tight around it. Immediately they rose to great heights the gas had
expanded, and the balloon had become globular in shape, with a result
that the stiffened ropes sprang to their new position with the crack
and jerk which had so startled the party. When day broke next morning
they found themselves over long tracts of desolate forest land, and
fearing they were approaching the wild, inhospitable steppes of Russia,
they descended with all speed, and discovered they were in the Duchy
of Nassau, in Germany, near Weilburg, where they were received with
the wildest enthusiasm and delight. From start to finish they had
accomplished a voyage of 500 miles in eighteen hours.
After this event Green made many other voyages in the great Nassau
balloon, and met with many exciting adventures. On one occasion,
ascending in a violent gale of wind, he and a passenger covered twenty
miles in a quarter of an hour, and, on descending near Rainham, in
Essex, were blown along across the fields at a furious pace, until the
anchor caught, and brought them up with such a wrench that it broke the
ring and jerked the car completely upside down. Green and his friend
only escaped from being thrown out by holding on to the ropes, and
they were afterwards dragged wildly through fences and hedges until the
balloon collapsed and came to a stand, though not before they had both
been severely hurt.
On another voyage the famous balloon met with serious injury, for
having been some time above the clouds, during an ascent, Green found
himself carried out to sea, and was obliged to come down in the water
two miles north of Sheerness. As in the accident which befell Mr.
Sadler in his attempt to cross the Irish Channel, the wind caught the
silk and bore it along across the water too rapidly for a pursuing
vessel to overtake it. Green then lowered his anchor, which by happy
chance soon became entangled in a sunken wreck, and so brought the
balloon up. A boat immediately put out to his assistance, and he and a
companion were speedily rescued; but the balloon was so restive in the
wind that it was dangerous to approach it. Green himself then suggested
that a volley of musketry should be fired into the silk to expel the
gas, and this was accordingly done and the balloon secured, though it
afterwards took Green a fortnight’s hard labour to repair the damage
done to the fabric.
But the saddest event connected with the Nassau balloon was the fatal
accident which befell Mr. Cocking in 1837, the year after the great
Nassau voyage. Before relating this, however, it will be necessary
to refer briefly to the history of a most important accessory of the
balloon, hitherto unmentioned--the parachute.
The name parachute comes from two French words, _parer_, to parry and
_chute_, a fall, and it signifies a contrivance, made more or less in
the form of an enormous umbrella, to break the fall from a balloon
or other great height. The principle of the parachute was understood
even before the invention of the balloon. In Eastern countries, in
particular, where the umbrella or parasol has been in familiar use
from earliest ages, parachutes were frequently employed by acrobats
to enable them to jump safely from great elevations. In France also,
at the end of the eighteenth century, a captive officer attempted to
escape from a lofty prison by similar means.
The aeronaut Blanchard was the first to construct a parachute for use
from a balloon, his idea being that it might prove of service in the
event of an accident while aloft. In 1785 he let down from a great
height a parachute to which was attached a dog in a basket, which
reached the ground gently and safely. After this M. Garnerin, the
famous balloonist already referred to, hazarded a parachute descent
in person, and his attempt being eminently satisfactory, parachute
descents became fairly common.
In August 1814 Mr. Cocking, an English gentleman of scientific
tastes, read a paper on parachutes, suggesting an amendment in their
shape and construction, before the Society of Arts, for which he was
awarded a medal. His theory was never put into practice, however, till
twenty-three years later, when, fired no doubt by the interest aroused
by the famous Nassau voyage, he resolved to put his invention to the
test.
He accordingly constructed his parachute, which was of enormous size,
of unwieldy weight, and in shape rather resembling an umbrella turned
inside out. Despite the warning of friends that the untried machine was
unwisely built, he insisted on making a descent with it, and succeeded
in persuading Mr. Green to take him and his craft aloft attached to the
Nassau balloon.
[Illustration: COCKING’S PARACHUTE.]
On the 27th of July 1837 they started from the Vauxhall Gardens, Mr.
Green in the car accompanied by Mr. Edward Spencer (grandfather of
the present well-known firm of aeronauts), his friend and frequent
companion; Mr. Cocking seated in his machine slung below. A height of
5000 feet was attained, and then Mr. Cocking, after bidding a hearty
farewell to the others, pulled the rope which liberated his parachute
from the balloon. Relieved from the enormous weight, the latter
rushed upwards into the sky with terrific velocity, the gas pouring
in volumes from the valves and almost suffocating the occupants of
the car. Their position, indeed, for the time was one of the greatest
danger, and they were thankful to reach the earth unharmed, which
they eventually did. But their fate was happier far than that of the
luckless Cocking, whose parachute, after swaying fearfully from side to
side, at length utterly collapsed, and falling headlong, was, with its
inventor, dashed to pieces.
While Charles Green was making his famous ascents in England, an
equally celebrated aeronaut, John Wise, was pursuing the same art in
America. During a long and successful career, unhappily terminated
by an accident, Wise made many experiments in the construction of
balloons, their shape, size, varnish, material, and so forth. His
results, which he carefully put together, have been of the greatest
value to balloon manufacturers until the present time. In the course
of his many voyages he met with various exciting adventures. On
one occasion while aloft he saw before him a huge black cloud of
particularly forbidding aspect. Entering this, he found himself in
the heart of a terrific storm. His balloon was caught in a whirlwind,
and set so violently spinning and swinging that he was sea-sick with
the motion, while, at the same time, he felt himself half-suffocated
and scarce able to breathe. Within the cloud the cold was intense;
the ropes of the balloon became glazed with ice and snow till they
resembled glass rods; hail fell around, and the gloom was so great that
from the car the silk above became invisible. “A noise resembling the
rushing of a thousand mill-dams, intermingled with a dismal moaning
sound of wind, surrounded me in this terrible flight.” Wise adds,
“Bright sunshine was just above the clouds;” but though he endeavoured
to reach it by throwing out ballast, the balloon had no sooner begun
to rise upwards than it was caught afresh by the storm and whirled
down again. Neither was he able, by letting out gas, to escape this
furious vortex from beneath; and for twenty minutes he was swept to and
fro, and up and down in the cloud, before he could get clear of it, or
regain any control over his balloon.
On another occasion Wise made an exceedingly daring and bold
experiment. Convinced of the power which, as has before been said,
an empty balloon has of turning itself into a natural parachute, he
determined to put the matter to the test, and deliberately to burst
his balloon when at a great height. For this purpose he made a special
balloon of very thin material, and fastened up the neck so that there
was no vent for the gas. He then ascended fearlessly to a height of
13,000 feet, where, through the expansion of the hydrogen with which it
was filled, his balloon exploded. The gas escaped instantly, so that in
ten seconds not a trace remained. The empty balloon at first descended
with fearful rapidity, with a strange moaning sound as the air rushed
through the network. Then the silk assuming parachute shape, the fall
became less rapid, and finally the car, coming down in zigzags, turned
upside down when close to the ground, and tossed Wise out into a field
unhurt.
It was John Wise’s great desire at one time to sail a balloon right
across the Atlantic from America to Europe. Long study of the upper
winds had convinced him that a regular current of air is always blowing
steadily high aloft from west to east, and he believed that if an
aeronaut could only keep his balloon in this upper current he might
be carried across the ocean quicker, and with more ease and safety,
than in the fastest steamship. Wise went so far as to work out all the
details for this plan, the size of the balloon required, the ballast,
provisions, and number of passengers; and only the want of sufficient
money prevented him from actually making the attempt. Curiously
enough, about the same time, Charles Green, in England, was, quite
independently, working at the same idea, which he also believed, with
proper equipment, to be quite feasible.