Now that airships are so much to the fore, this account of the
meteoric career of the largest “dirigible balloon” ever
constructed--larger even than Count Zeppelin’s unfortunate
monster--will be read with interest. The inventor had an ambitious
scheme for running luxuriously-fitted aerial liners between New York
and San Francisco, but his first ship got no farther than the
ascension ground. The photographs accompanying the article are
particularly striking.
Some time last year there came from the windy city of Chicago to the
hardly less breezy San Francisco a man named John A. Morrell, who built a
small airship with a balloon of insufficient size to lift the engines and
netting. The craft got loose before the crew of twelve had taken their
places and rose from a hundred to two hundred feet in the air, floating
away in a southerly direction down the San Francisco peninsula and coming
to rest at Burlingame, in San Mateo County, twenty miles from its
starting-point.
Nothing daunted by this mishap, Morrell organized the “National Airship
Company,” incorporated under the laws of South Dakota, established offices
in a leading street of San Francisco, and put forth a glowing prospectus,
in which people were invited to invest their money in a sure thing--to
wit, an airship a quarter of a mile long, already under construction, and
intended to make regular trips between San Francisco and New York City,
carrying passengers as comfortably as a Pullman car. The chairs in this
remarkable craft were to be made of hollow aluminium tubes and to weigh
only seventeen ounces; the bedsteads, of the same material, weighing
twenty-seven ounces. The mattresses were to be inflated with a very light
gas of a secret nature. Extravagant and fantastic though all this sounds,
Morrell possessed the enthusiasm and glibness of the genuine promoter,
contriving to obtain many thousands of dollars from credulous people in
support of his wild project.
[Illustration: MORRELL’S MONSTER AIRSHIP BEING INFLATED, READY FOR ITS
FIRST ASCENT, IN THE PRESENCE OF A VAST CROWD.
_From a Photograph._]
The National Airship Company established shops in San Francisco, and went
to work upon the airship, which was named “Ariel.” The construction was
under the direction of George H. Loose, who has had considerable
experience in building aeroplanes and airships. It was intended that Loose
should be first officer of the aerial liner, but, when the time for making
the first ascent came, Loose wisely threw up his job, because Morrell had
disregarded his advice in the construction.
[Illustration: A NEAR VIEW OF PART OF THE AIRSHIP, SHOWING ONE OF THE
ENGINES AND PROPELLERS--NOTICE THE FLIMSY NETTINGS AND THE MATTRESSES
INTENDED TO SUPPORT THE CREW.
_From a Photograph._]
Nearly every well-known principle of airship construction was violated.
The proportions were impracticable, the craft being four hundred and
eighty-five feet long and having a diameter of only thirty-four feet. The
gas-bag was like a huge snake, having no rigidity, either horizontally or
vertically, and not being stiffened by trussing of any adequate sort. A
gas-bag of such length and proportionately small diameter should have been
strengthened by a vertical framework, or by trusswork of rope or wire, so
as to impart rigidity; but nothing of this sort was done. The motive-power
was supplied by six separate four-cylinder forty-horse-power automobile
engines, hung below the balloon at intervals.
[Illustration: THE AIRSHIP LEAVING THE GROUND AMID THE CHEERS OF THE
EXCITED ONLOOKERS.
_From a Photograph._]
These concentrated weights were carried on a platform, not of planks, but
of mattresses, laid down on mere canvas, supported by the netting which
covered the gas-bag. Ropes placed round the gas-bag at the points where
the engines were situated cut deeply into it, and no arrangements whatever
were made to meet the special stresses caused by the steering of so
long-drawn-out an affair. Loose’s chief reasons for refusing to make the
ascent were that if the envelope were filled with enough gas to render it
rigid the emergency valves would open, and if these were tightened the
envelope was liable to burst.
Serious as the various defects mentioned were, the most fatal one was the
fact that nothing had been done to prevent collapse or deformation caused
by sudden expansion or contraction of the gas from changes of temperature.
The balloon was one great, undivided bag, containing from four hundred
thousand to five hundred thousand cubic feet of gas, but having no
compartments or internal air-bags. Its lifting capacity was from eight to
ten tons, so that it was much the largest airship ever built in America,
even exceeding in dimensions the great “dirigible” of Count von Zeppelin.
It might be supposed that it would be pretty hard to get together a score
of persons who would be willing to risk their lives in such an unpractical
affair as the Morrell airship; but, strangely enough, the greatest
difficulty was experienced in keeping people off the craft. One man, a
well-known aeronaut named Captain Penfold, repeatedly begged Morrell to
let him make the ascent, but his request was flatly refused. Yet so eager
was Penfold that at the last minute he smuggled himself on to the craft
and went up with it and--a few moments later--came down with it.
[Illustration: THE “ARIEL” IN MID-AIR. ITS NOSE HAD A DECIDED TILT
DOWNWARDS, AND THIS INCREASED UNTIL ALL EQUILIBRIUM WAS LOST.
_From a Photograph._]
Some time before the attempted ascent was made the airship was conveyed
from San Francisco across the Bay to Berkeley, in Alameda County, Cal. The
trial trip was fixed for Saturday, May 23rd, and on that morning thousands
of excited people were on hand to watch the ascent. The airship was
released from its moorings and began to mount into the air, its nose
having a decided tilt downwards. The machine had risen scarcely two or
three hundred feet when the rear of the balloon had an upward inclination
of as much as forty-five degrees.
Morrell shouted to his crew, consisting of engineers and valve-tenders,
numbering fourteen or fifteen, to go aft, so as to depress the stern of
the machine and cause it to resume its equilibrium. But the shouts and
cheers of the people below drowned his voice so that he could not be
heard. A moment later the gas rushed into the after-end of the bag with
great force, bursting the oiled cloth of which the envelope was
constructed, and the cheers had hardly died away before the
horror-stricken crowd saw the great balloon collapse and come headlong to
the ground, with its nineteen passengers, who included Morrell, eight
engineers, five valve-tenders, two photographers with their assistants,
and the aeronaut already mentioned.
[Illustration: “THE HORROR-STRICKEN CROWD SAW THE GREAT BALLOON COLLAPSE
AND COME HEADLONG TO THE GROUND WITH ITS NINETEEN PASSENGERS.” NOTICE THE
VALVE-TENDER SCRAMBLING WILDLY ALONG THE NETTING ON TOP OF THE GAS-BAG;
HIS AGILITY STOOD HIM IN GOOD STEAD, FOR HE ESCAPED ALMOST UNINJURED.
_From a Photograph._]
The unfortunate men were entangled in the wreckage of flapping cloth,
network, and machinery, running the danger of being struck by the
propellers of the engines or of being suffocated by the great volumes of
escaping gas. One valve-tender, who was on the top of the great bag, can
be seen in one of the photographs climbing along the netting. His agility
stood him in good stead, for he escaped from the wreck almost uninjured.
[Illustration: GATHERING UP THE WRECKAGE AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE
AIRSHIP.
_From a Photograph._]
It might be supposed that nearly all the men on the ill-fated craft were
killed; but, remarkable to relate, not one lost his life. Morrell himself
sustained severe lacerations, and had both his legs broken by one of the
propellers; Penfold, the persistent, had his right ankle and left instep
broken; Rogers, an assistant engineer, suffered a broken right ankle; and
another engineer met with broken ribs and ankles. Others were bruised or
rendered unconscious by the gas.
Morrell ascribed the disaster to the fact that he was forced by impatient
stockholders in the National Airship Company to make the attempted flight
before he had worked out certain details of the vessel’s construction
thoroughly. It is believed by those who saw the luckless craft that it was
constructed flimsily of poor materials and not inflated sufficiently. The
ill-starred aeronautic adventure not only cost many broken bones, but some
forty thousand dollars (more than eight thousand pounds) in money.
It would naturally be supposed that so complete and disastrous a failure,
after the expenditure of so large a sum of money, would have destroyed all
confidence in Morrell as a designer of airships, and would have put him
out of the business of aerial navigation for all time. But it was not so;
the enthusiast still asserts that he has discovered the true principle of
the navigation of the air, and that the National Airship Company is ready
to proceed with the construction of another craft, much larger and
costlier than the first one.
The new airship is to be seven hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet
in diameter, equipped with eight gasolene engines, developing nearly three
hundred and fifty horse-power and operating sixteen propellers. The inside
bag will be of light silk and the outside bag of heavy silk interwoven
with a material known as “flexible aluminium,” of which Morrell possesses
the secret. The new balloon is to have more than a hundred compartments,
many of which might be broken without disturbing the buoyancy or
equilibrium of the vessel.
A rigid platform is to be substituted for the canvas and netting cage in
which the unfortunate participants in the attempted ascent of the “Ariel”
rode. The new vessel is to cost one hundred thousand dollars (more than
twenty thousand pounds), and to be capable, if the inventor is to be
believed, of a speed of a hundred miles an hour. The really marvellous
things about the whole business are the unquenchable enthusiasm of the
inventor and the unfailing credulity of those who believe in him.