By this period the domination of the air was being pursued in a fresh
part of the world. England and her Continental neighbours had vied with
each in adding to the roll of conquests, and it could hardly other be
supposed that America would stand by without taking part in the campaign
which was now being revived with so much fresh energy in the skies.
The American champion who stepped forward was Mr. John Wise, of
Lancaster, Pa., whose career, commencing in the year 1835, we must now
for a while follow. Few attempts at ballooning of any kind had up to
that time been made in all America. There is a record that in December,
1783, Messrs. Rittenhouse and Hopkins, Members of the Philosophical
Academy of Philadelphia, instituted experiments with an aerial machine
consisting of a cage to which forty-seven small balloons were harnessed.
In this strange craft a carpenter, by name Wilcox, was induced to
ascend, which, it is said, he did successfully, remaining in the air for
ten minutes, when, finding himself near a river, he sought to come to
earth again by opening several of his balloons. This brought about an
awkward descent, attended, however, by no more serious accident than a
dislocated wrist. Mr. Wise, on the other hand, states that Blanchard had
won the distinction of making the first ascent in the New World in 1793
in Philadelphia on which occasion Washington was a spectator; and a few
years afterwards other Frenchmen gave exhibitions, which, however, led
to no real development of the new art on this, the further side of the
Atlantic. Thus the endeavours we are about to describe were those of an
independent and, at the same time, highly, practical experimentalist,
and on this account have a special value of their own.
The records that Wise has left of his investigations begin at the
earliest stage, and possess the charm of an obvious and somewhat quaint
reality. They commence with certain crude calculations which would seem
to place no limit to the capabilities of a balloon. Thus, he points out
that one of "the very moderate size of 400 feet diameter" would convey
13,000 men. "No wonder, then," he continues, "the citizens of London
became alarmed during the French War, when they mistook the appearance
of a vast flock of birds coming towards the Metropolis for Napoleon's
army apparently coming down upon them with this new contrivance."
Proceeding to practical measures, Wise's first care was to procure some
proper material of which to build an experimental balloon of sufficient
size to lift and convey himself alone. For this he chose ordinary
long-cloth, rendered gas-tight by coats of suitable varnish, the
preparation of which became with him, as, indeed, it remains to this
day, a problem of chief importance and difficulty. Perhaps it hardly
needs pointing out that the varnish of a balloon must not only
be sufficiently elastic not to crack or scale off with folding or
unavoidable rough usage, but it must also be of a nature to resist the
common tendency of such substances to become adherent or "tacky." Wise
determined on bird lime thinned with linseed oil and ordinary driers.
With this preparation he coated his material several times both before
and after the making up, and having procured a net, of which he speaks
with pride, and a primitive sort of car, of which he bitterly complains,
he thought himself sufficiently equipped to embark on an actual ascent,
which he found a task of much greater practical difficulty than the mere
manufacture of his air ship. For the inflation by hydrogen of so small
a balloon as his was he made more than ample provision in procuring
no less than fifteen casks of 130 gallons capacity each. He also duly
secured a suitable filling ground at the corner of Ninth and Green
Streets, Philadelphia, but he made a miscalculation as to the time the
inflation would demand, and this led to unforeseen complications, for
as yet he knew not the way of a crowd which comes to witness a balloon
ascent.
Having all things in readiness, and prudently waiting for fair weather,
he embarked on his grand experiment on the 2nd of May, 1835, announcing
4 p.m. as the hour of departure. But by that time the inflation, having
only proceeded for three hours, the balloon was but half full, and then
the populace began to behave as in such circumstances they always will.
They were incredulous, and presently grew troublesome. In vain the
harnessing of the car was proceeded with as though all were well. For
all was not well, and when the aeronaut stepped into his car with only
fifteen pounds of sand and a few instruments he must have done so with
much misgiving. Still, he had friends around who might have been useful
had they been less eager to help. But these simply crowded round him,
giving him no elbow room, nor opportunity for trying the "lift" of his
all-too-empty globe. Moreover, some would endeavour to throw the machine
upward, while others as strenuously strove to keep it down, and at last
the former party prevailed, and the balloon, being fairly cast into the
air, grazed a neighbouring chimney and then plunged into an adjacent
plot, not, however, before the distracted traveller had flung away
all his little stock of sand. There now was brief opportunity for free
action, and to the first bystander who came running up Wise gave
the task of holding the car in check. To the next he handed out his
instruments, his coat, and also his boots, hoping thus to get away; but
his chance had not yet come, for once again the crowd swarmed round him,
keeping him prisoner with good-natured but mistaken interference, and
drowning his voice with excited shouting. Somehow, by word and gesture,
he gave his persecutors to understand that he wished to speak, and then
he begged them only to give him a chance, whereupon the crowd fell
back, forming a ring, and leaving only one man holding the car. It was
a moment of suspense, for Wise calculated that he had only parted with
some eighteen pounds since his first ineffectual start from the filling
ground; but it was enough, and in another moment he was sailing up
clear above the crowd. So great, as has been already shewn, is often
the effect of parting with the last few pounds of dead weight in a
well-balanced balloon.
Such was the first "send off" of the future great balloonist, destined
to become the pioneer in aeronautics on the far side of the Atlantic.
The balloon ascended to upwards of a mile, floating gradually away, but
at its highest point it reached a conflict of currents, causing eddies
from which Wise escaped by a slight decrease of weight, effected by
merely cutting away the wreaths of flowers that were tied about his car.
A further small substitute for ballast he extemporised in the metal tube
inserted in the neck of his fabric, and this he cast out when over the
breadth of the Delaware, and he describes it as falling with a rustling
sound, and striking the water with a splash plainly heard at more than
a mile in the sky. After an hour and a quarter the balloon spontaneously
and steadily settled to earth.
An ascent carried out later in the same summer led to a mishap, which
taught the young aeronaut an all-important lesson. Using the same
balloon and the same mode of inflation, he got safely and satisfactorily
away from his station in the town of Lebanon, Pa., and soon found
himself over a toll gate in the open country, where the gate keeper in
banter called up to him for his due. To this summons Wise, with heedless
alacrity, responded in a manner which might well have cost him dear. He
threw out a bag of sand to represent his toll, and, though he estimated
this at only six pounds, it so greatly accelerated his ascent that he
shortly found himself at a greater altitude than he ever after attained.
He passed through mist into upper sunshine, where he experienced extreme
cold and ear-ache, at which time, seeking the natural escape from such
trouble, he found to his dismay that the valve rope was out of reach.
Thus he was compelled to allow the balloon to ascend yet higher, at its
own will; and then a terrible event happened.
By mischance the neck of his balloon, which should have been open, was
out of reach and folded inwards in such a way as to prevent the free
escape of the gas, which, at this great altitude, struggled for egress
with a loud humming noise, giving him apprehensions of an accident which
very shortly occurred, namely, the bursting of the lower part of his
balloon with a loud report. It happened, however, that no extreme loss
of gas ensued, and he commenced descending with a speed which, though
considerable, was not very excessive. Still, he was eager to alight in
safety, until a chance occurrence made him a second time that afternoon
guilty of an act of boyish impetuosity. A party of volunteers firing
a salute in his honour as he neared the ground, he instantly flung out
papers, ballast, anything he could lay his hands on, and once again
soared to a great height with his damaged balloon. He could then do no
more, and presently subsiding to earth again, he acquired the welcome
knowledge that even in such precarious circumstances a balloon may make
a long fall with safety to its freight.
Mr. Wise's zeal and indomitable spirit of enterprise led to speedy
developments of the art which he had espoused; the road to success being
frequently pointed out by failure or mishap. He quickly discarded the
linen balloon for one of silk on which he tried a new varnish composed
of linseed oil and india-rubber, and, dressing several gores with this,
he rolled them up and left them through a night in a drying loft, with
the result that the next day they were disintegrated and on the point
of bursting into flame by spontaneous combustion. Fresh silk and
other varnish were then tried, but with indifferent success. Next he
endeavoured to dispense with sewing, and united the gores of yet another
balloon by the mere adhesiveness of the varnish and application of a hot
iron. This led to a gaping seam developing at the moment of an ascent,
and then there followed a hasty and hazardous descent on a house-top and
an exciting rescue by a gentleman who appeared opportunely at a third
storey window. Further, another balloon had been destroyed, and Wise
badly burned, at a descent, owing to a naked light having been brought
near the escaping gas. It is then without wonder that we find him
after this temporarily bankrupt, and resorting to his skill in
instrument-making to recover his fortunes. Only, however, for a few
months, after which he is before the public once more as a professional
aeronaut. He now adopts coal gas for inflation, and incidents of an
impressive nature crowd into his career, forcing important facts upon
him. The special characteristics of his own country present peculiar
difficulties; broad rivers and vast forests become serious obstacles.
He is caught in the embrace of a whirlwind; he narrowly escapes falling
into a forest fire; he is precipitated, but harmlessly, into a pine
wood. Among other experiments, he makes a small copy of Mr. Cocking's
parachute, and drops it to earth with a cat as passenger, proving
thereby that that unfortunate gentleman's principle was really less in
fault than the actual slenderness of the material used in his machine.
We now approach one of Wise's boldest, and at the same time most
valuable, experiments. It was the summer of 1839, and once again the old
trouble of spontaneous combustion had destroyed a silk balloon which
was to have ascended at Easton, Pa. Undeterred, however, Wise resolutely
advertised a fresh attempt, and, with only a clear month before the
engagement, determined on hastily rigging up a cambric muslin balloon,
soaking it in linseed oil and essaying the best exhibition that
this improvised experiment could afford. It was intended to become
a memorable one, inasmuch as, should he meet with no hindrance, his
determination was nothing less than that of bursting this balloon at a
great height, having firmly convinced himself that the machine in these
circumstances would form itself into a natural parachute, and bring
him to earth with every chance in favour of safety. In his own words,
"Scientific calculations were on his side with a certainty as great and
principles as comprehensive as that a pocket-handkerchief will not fall
as rapidly to the ground when thrown out of a third storey window as
will a brick."
His balloon was specially contrived for the experiment in hand, having
cords sewn to the upper parts of its seams, and then led down through
the neck, where they were secured within reach, their office being that
of rending the whole head of the balloon should this be desired. On this
occasion a cat and a dog were taken up, one of these being let fall from
a height of 2,000 feet in a Cocking's parachute, and landing in safety,
the other being similarly dismissed at an altitude of 4,000 feet in an
oiled silk balloon made in the form of a collapsed balloon, which,
after falling a little distance, expanded sufficiently to allow of its
descending with a safe though somewhat vibratory motion. Its behaviour,
at any rate, fully determined Wise on carrying out his own experiment.
Being constructed entirely for the main object in view, the balloon had
no true opening in the neck beyond an orifice of about an inch, and by
the time a height of 13,000 feet had been reached the gas was streaming
violently through this small hole, the entire globe being expanded
nearly to bursting point, and the cords designed for rending the balloon
very tense. At this critical period Wise owns to having experienced
considerable nervous excitement, and observing far down a thunderstorm
in progress he began to waver in his mind, and inclined towards
relieving the balloon of its strain, and so abandoning his experiment,
at least for the present. He remembers pulling out his watch to make a
note of the hour, and, while thus occupied, the straining cords, growing
tenser every moment, suddenly took charge of the experiment and burst
the balloon of their own accord. The gas now rushed from the huge rent
above tumultuously and in some ten seconds had entirely escaped, causing
the balloon to descend rapidly, until the lower part of the muslin,
doubling in upwards, formed a species of parachute after the manner
intended. The balloon now came down with zig-zag descent, and finally
the car, striking the earth obliquely, tossed its occupant out into
a field unharmed. Shortly after this Wise experimented with further
success with an exploded balloon.
It is not a little remarkable that this pioneer of aeronautics in
American--a contemporary of Charles Green in England, but working and
investigating single-handed on perfectly independent lines--should
have arrived at the same conclusions as did Green himself as to the
possibility, which, in his opinion, amounted to a certainty, of being
able to cross the Atlantic by balloon if only adequate funds were
forth-coming. So intent was he on his bold scheme that, in the summer of
1843, he handed to the Lancaster Intelligencer a proclamation, which he
desired might be conveyed to all publishers of newspapers on the globe.
It contained, among other clauses, the following:--
"Having from a long experience in aeronautics been convinced that a
constant and regular current of air is blowing at all times from west to
east, with a velocity of from twenty to forty and even sixty miles per
hour, according to its height from the earth, and having discovered a
composition which renders silk or muslin impervious to hydrogen gas, so
that a balloon may be kept afloat for many weeks, I feel confident with
these advantages that a trip across the Atlantic will not be attended
with as much real danger as by the common mode of transition. The
balloon is to be 100 feet in diameter, giving it a net ascending power
of 25,000 lbs." It was further stated that the crew would consist of
three persons, including a sea navigator, and a scientific landsman.
The specifications for the transatlantic vessel were also to include a
seaworthy boat in place of the ordinary car. The sum requisite for this
enterprise was, at the time, not realised; but it should be mentioned
that several years later a sufficient sum of money was actually
subscribed. In the summer of 1873 the proprietors of the New York Daily
Graphic provided for the construction of a balloon of no less than
400,000 cubic feet capacity, and calculated to lift 14,000 lbs. It was,
however, made of bad material; and, becoming torn in inflation, Wise
condemned and declined to use it. A few months later, when it had been
repaired, one Donaldson and two other adventurers, attempting a voyage
with this ill-formed monster, ascended from New York, and were
fortunate in coming down safely, though not without peril, somewhere in
Connecticut.
Failing in his grand endeavour, Wise continued to follow the career of a
professional aeronaut for some years longer, of which he has left a full
record, terminating with the spring of 1848. His ascents were always
marked by carefulness of detail, and a coolness and courage in trying
circumstances that secured him uniform success and universal regard. He
was, moreover, always a close and intelligent observer, and many of his
memoranda are of scientific value.
His description of an encounter with a storm-cloud in the June of 1843
has an interest of its own, and may not be considered overdrawn. It was
an ascent from Carlisle, Pa., to celebrate the anniversary of Bunker's
Hill, and Wise was anxious to gratify the large concourse of people
assembled, and thus was tempted, soon after leaving the ground, to dive
up into a huge black cloud of peculiarly forbidding aspect. This cloud
appeared to remain stationary while he swept beneath it, and, having
reached its central position, he observed that its under surface was
concave towards the earth, and at that moment he became swept upwards in
a vortex that set his balloon spinning and swinging violently, while he
himself was afflicted with violent nausea and a feeling of suffocation.
The cold experienced now became intense, and the cordage became glazed
with ice, yet this had no effect in checking the upward whirling of the
balloon. Sunshine was beyond the upper limits of the cloud; but this was
no sooner reached than the balloon, escaping from the uprush, plunged
down several hundred feet, only to be whirled up again, and this
reciprocal motion was repeated eight or ten times during an interval of
twenty minutes, in all of which time no expenditure of gas or discharge
of ballast enabled the aeronaut to regain any control over his vessel.
Statements concerning a thunderstorm witnessed at short range by Wise
will compare with other accounts. The thunder "rattled" without any
reverberations, and when the storm was passing, and some dense clouds
moving in the upper currents, the "surface of the lower stratum swelled
up suddenly like a boiling cauldron, which was immediately followed by
the most brilliant ebullition of sparkling coruscations." Green, in his
stormy ascent from Newbury, England, witnessed a thunderstorm below
him, as will be remembered, while an upper cloud stratum lay at his
own level. It was then that Green observed that "at every discharge of
thunder all the detached pillars of clouds within the distance of a mile
around became attracted."
The author will have occasion, in due place, to give personal
experiences of an encounter with a thunderstorm which will compare with
the foregoing description.