Resuming the roll of progressive aeronauts in England whose labours
were devoted to the practical conquest of the air, and whose methods and
mechanical achievements mark the road of advance by which the
successes of to-day have been obtained, there stand out prominently two
individuals, of whom one has already received mention in these pages.
The period of a single life is seldom sufficient to allow within its
span the full development of any new departure in art or science, and it
cannot, therefore, be wondered at if Charles Green, though reviving and
re-modelling the art of ballooning in our own country, even after an
exceptionally long and successful career, left that pursuit to which he
had given new birth virtually still in its infancy.
The year following that in which Green conducted the famous Nassau
voyage we find him experimenting in the same balloon with his chosen
friend and colleague, Edward Spencer, solicitor, of Barnsbury, who, only
nine years later, compiles memoranda of thirty-four ascents, made under
every variety of circumstance, many being of a highly enterprising
nature. We find him writing enthusiastically of the raptures he
experienced when sailing over London in night hours, of lofty ascents
and extremely low temperatures, of speeding twenty-eight miles in twenty
minutes, of grapnel ropes breaking, and of a cross-country race of four
miles through woods and hedges. Such was Mr. Spencer the elder, and if
further evidence were needed of his practical acquaintance with, as well
as personal devotion to, his adopted profession of aeronautics, we have
it in the store of working calculations and other minutiae of the craft,
most carefully compiled in manuscript by his own hand; these memoranda
being to this day constantly consulted by his grandsons, the present
eminent aeronauts, Messrs. Spencer Brothers, as supplying a manual of
reliable data for the execution of much of the most important parts of
their work.
In the terrific ordeal and risk entailed by the daring and fatal
parachute descent of Cocking, Green required an assistant of exceptional
nerve and reliability, and, as has been recorded, his choice at once
fell on Edward Spencer. In this choice it has already been shown that
he was well justified, and in the trying circumstances that ensued Green
frankly owns that it was his competent companion who was the first to
recover himself. A few years later, when a distinguished company, among
whom were Albert Smith and Shirley Brooks, made a memorable ascent from
Cremorne, Edward Spencer is one of the select party.
Some account of this voyage should be given, and it need not be said
that no more graphic account is to be found than that given by the
facile pen of Albert Smith himself. His personal narrative also forms
an instructive contrast to another which he had occasion to give to
the world shortly afterwards, and which shall be duly noticed. The
enthusiastic writer first describes, with apparent pride, the company
that ascended with him. Besides Mr. Shirley Brooks, there were Messrs.
Davidson, of the Garrick Club; Mr. John Lee, well known in theatrical
circles; Mr. P. Thompson, of Guy's Hospital, and others--ten in all,
including Charles Green as skipper, and Edward Spencer, who, sitting
in the rigging, was entrusted with the all-important management of the
valve rope.
"The first sensation experienced," Albert Smith continues, "was not
that we were rising, but that the balloon remained fixed, whilst all the
world below was rapidly falling away; while the cheers with which they
greeted our departure grew fainter, and the cheerers themselves began
to look like the inmates of many sixpenny Noah's Arks grouped upon
a billiard table.... Our hats would have held millions.... And most
strange is the roar of the city as it comes surging into the welkin
as though the whole metropolis cheered you with one voice.... Yet
none beyond the ordinary passengers are to be seen. The noise is as
inexplicable as the murmur in the air at hot summer noontide."
The significance of this last remark will be insisted on when the writer
has to tell his own experiences aloft over London, as also a note to
the effect that there were seen "large enclosed fields and gardens
and pleasure grounds where none were supposed to exist by ordinary
passengers." Another interesting note, having reference to a once
familiar feature on the river, now disappearing, related to the paddle
boats of those days, the steamers making a very beautiful effect,
"leaving two long wings of foam behind them similar to the train of a
table rocket." Highly suggestive, too, of the experiences of railway
travellers in the year 1847 is the account of the alighting, which, by
the way, was obviously of no very rude nature. "Every time," says the
writer, "the grapnel catches in the ground the balloon is pulled up
suddenly with a shock that would soon send anybody from his seat, a jerk
like that which occurs when fresh carriages are brought up to a railway
train." But the concluding paragraph in this rosy narrative affords
another and a very notable contrast to the story which that same writer
had occasion to put on record before that same year had passed.
"We counsel everybody to go up in a balloon... In spite of the apparent
frightful fragility of cane and network nothing can in reality be more
secure... The stories of pressure on the ears, intense cold, and the
danger of coming down are all fictions.... Indeed, we almost wanted
a few perils to give a little excitement to the trip, and have some
notion, if possible, of going up the next time at midnight with
fireworks in a thunderstorm, throwing away all the ballast, fastening
down the valve, and seeing where the wind will send us."
The fireworks, the thunderstorm, and the throwing away of ballast, all
came off on the 15th of the following October, when Albert Smith made
his second ascent, this time from Vauxhall Gardens, under the guidance
of Mr. Gypson, and accompanied by two fellow-passengers. Fireworks,
which were to be displayed when aloft, were suspended on a framework
forty feet below the car. Lightning was also playing around as they cast
off. The description which Albert Smith gives of London by night as seen
from an estimated elevation of 4,000 feet, should be compared with other
descriptions that will be given in these pages:--
"In the obscurity all traces of houses and enclosures are lost sight
of. I can compare it to nothing else than floating over dark blue and
boundless sea spangled with hundreds of thousands of stars. These stars
were the lamps. We could see them stretching over the river at the
bridges, edging its banks, forming squares and long parallel lines of
light in the streets and solitary parks. Further and further apart until
they were altogether lost in the suburbs. The effect was bewildering."
At 7,000 feet, one of the passengers, sitting in the ring, remarked that
the balloon was getting very tense, and the order was given to "ease
her" by opening the top valve. The valve line was accordingly pulled,
"and immediately afterwards we heard a noise similar to the escape
of steam in a locomotive, and the lower part of the balloon collapsed
rapidly, and appeared to fly up into the upper portion. At the same
instant the balloon began to fall with appalling velocity, the immense
mass of loose silk surging and rustling frightfully over our heads....
retreating up away from us more and more into the head of the balloon.
The suggestion was made to throw everything over that might lighten the
balloon. I had two sandbags in my lap, which were cast away directly....
There were several large bags of ballast, and some bottles of wine, and
these were instantly thrown away, but no effect was perceptible. The
wind still appeared to be rushing up past us at a fearful rate, and,
to add to the horror, we came among the still expiring discharge of
the fireworks which floated in the air, so that little bits of exploded
cases and touch-paper, still incandescent, attached themselves to the
cordage of the balloon and were blown into sparks.... I presume we
must have been upwards of a mile from the earth.... How long we were
descending I have not the slightest idea, but two minutes must have
been the outside.... We now saw the houses, the roofs of which appeared
advancing to meet us, and the next instant, as we dashed by their
summits, the words, 'Hold hard!' burst simultaneously from all the
party.... We were all directly thrown out of the car along the ground,
and, incomprehensible as it now appears to me, nobody was seriously
hurt."
But "not so incomprehensible, after all," will be the verdict of all
who compare the above narrative with the ascents given in a foregoing
account of how Wise had fared more than once when his balloon had burst.
For, as will be readily guessed, the balloon had in this case also
burst, owing to the release of the upper valve being delayed too long,
and the balloon had in the natural way transformed itself into a true
parachute. Moreover, the fall, which, by Albert Smith's own showing,
was that of about a mile in two minutes, was not more excessive than one
which will presently be recorded of Mr. Glaisher, who escaped with no
material injury beyond a few bruises.
One fact has till now been omitted with regard to the above sensational
voyage, namely, the name of the passenger who, sitting in the ring,
was the first to point out the imminent danger of the balloon. This
individual was none other than Mr. Henry Coxwell, the second, indeed, of
the two who were mentioned in the opening paragraph of this chapter as
marking the road of progress which it is the scope of these pages to
trace, and to whom we must now formally introduce our readers.
This justly famous sky pilot, whose practical acquaintance with
ballooning extends over more than forty years, was the son of a naval
officer residing near Chatham, and in his autobiography he describes
enthusiastically how, a lad of nine years old, he watched through a sea
telescope a balloon, piloted by Charles Green, ascend from Rochester
and, crossing the Thames, disappear in distance over the Essex flats. He
goes on to describe how the incident started him in those early days on
boyish endeavours to construct fire balloons and paper parachutes. Some
years later his home, on the death of his father, being transferred to
Eltham, he came within frequent view of such balloons as, starting from
the neighbourhood of London, will through the summer drift with the
prevailing winds over that part of Kent. And it was here that, ere long,
he came in at the death of another balloon of which Green was in charge.
And from this time onwards the schoolboy with the strange hobby was
constantly able to witness the flights and even the inflations of those
ships of the air, which, his family associations notwithstanding took
precedence of all boyish diversions.
His elder brother, now a naval officer, entirely failed to divert his
aspirations into other channels, and it was when the boy had completed
sixteen summers that an aeronautic enterprise attracted not only his
own, but public attention also. It was the building of a mammoth balloon
at Vauxhall under the superintendence of Mr. Green. The launching of
this huge craft when completed was regarded as so great an occasion that
the young Coxwell, who had by this time obtained a commercial opening
abroad, was allowed, at his earnest entreaty, to stay till the event
had come off, and fifty years after the hardened sky sailor is found
describing with a boyish enthusiasm how thirty-six policemen were needed
round that balloon; how enormous weights were attached to the cordage,
only to be lifted feet above the ground; while the police were compelled
to pass their staves through the meshes to prevent the cords cutting
their hands. At this ascent Mr. Hollond was a passenger, and by the
middle of the following November all Europe was ringing with the great
Nassau venture.
Commercial business did not suit the young Coxwell, and at the age
of one-and-twenty we find him trying his hand at the profession of
surgeon-dentist, not, however, with any prospect of its keeping him from
the longing of his soul, which grew stronger and stronger upon him. It
was not till the summer of 1844 that Mr. Hampton, giving an exhibition
from the White Conduit Gardens, Pentonville, offered the young man, then
twenty-five years old, his first ascent.
In after years Coxwell referred to his first sensations in
characteristic language, contrasting them with the experiences of the
mountaineer. "In Alpine travels," he says, "the process is so slow, and
contact with the crust of the earth so palpable, that the traveller
is gradually prepared for each successive phase of view as it presents
itself. But in the balloon survey, cities, villages, and vast tracts for
observation spring almost magically before the eye, and change in
aspect and size so pleasingly that bewilderment first and then unbounded
admiration is sure to follow."
The ice was now fairly broken, and, not suffering professional duties
to be any hindrance, Coxwell began to make a series of ascents under the
leadership of two rival balloonists, Gale and Gypson. One voyage made
with the latter he describes as leading to the most perilous descent in
the annals of aerostation. This was the occasion, given above, on which
Albert Smith was a passenger, and which that talented writer describes
in his own fashion. He does not, however, add the fact, worthy of being
chronicled, that exactly a week after the appalling adventure Gypson
and Coxwell, accompanied by a Captain whose name does not transpire,
and loaded with twice the previous weight of fireworks, made a perfectly
successful night ascent and descent in the same balloon.
It is very shortly after this that we find Coxwell seduced into
undertaking for its owners the actual management of a balloon, the
property of Gale, and now to be known as the "Sylph." With this craft he
practically began his career as a professional balloonist, and after
a few preliminary ascents made in England, was told off to carry on
engagements in Belgium.
A long series of ascents was now made on the Continent, and in the
troubled state of affairs some stirring scenes were visited, not without
some real adventure. One occasion attended with imminent risk occurred
at Berlin in 1851. Coxwell relates that a Prussian labourer whom he
had dismissed for bad conduct, and who almost too manifestly harboured
revenge, nevertheless begged hard for a re-engagement, which, as the
man was a handy fellow, Coxwell at length assented to. He took up three
passengers beside himself, and at an elevation of some 3,000 feet found
it necessary to open the valve, when, on pulling the cord, one of the
top shutters broke and remained open, leaving a free aperture of 26
inches by 12 inches, and occasioning such a copious discharge of gas
that nothing short of a providential landing could save disaster. But
the providential landing came, the party falling into the embrace of a
fruit tree in an orchard. It transpired afterwards that the labourer had
been seen to tamper with the valve, the connecting lines of which he had
partially severed.
Returning to England in 1852 Coxwell, through the accidents inseparable
from his profession, found himself virtually in possession of the field.
Green, now advanced in years, was retiring from the public life in which
he had won so much fame and honour. Gale was dead, killed in an
ascent at Bordeaux. Only one aspirant contested the place of public
aeronaut--one Goulston, who had been Gale's patron. Before many months,
however, he too met with a balloonist's death, being dashed against some
stone walls when ascending near Manchester.
It will not be difficult to form an estimate of how entirely the
popularity of the balloon was now reestablished in England, from the
mere fact that before the expiration of the year Coxwell had been called
upon to make thirty-six voyages. Some of these were from Glasgow,
and here a certain coincidence took place which is too curious to be
omitted. A descent effected near Milngavie took place in the same field
in which Sadler, twenty-nine years before, had also descended, and the
same man who caught the rope of Mr. Sadler's balloon performed the same
service once again for a fresh visitor from the skies.
The following autumn Coxwell, in fulfilling one out of many engagements,
found himself in a dilemma which bore resemblance in a slight degree to
a far more serious predicament in which the writer became involved, and
which must be told in due place. The preparations for the ascent, which
was from the Mile End Road, had been hurried, and after finally getting
away at a late hour in the evening, it was found that the valve line
had got caught in a fold of the silk, and could not be operated. In
consequence, the balloon was, of necessity, left to take its own chance
through the night, and, after rising to a considerable height, it slowly
lost buoyancy during the chilly hours, and, gradually settling, came
to earth near Basingstoke, where the voyager, failing to get help or
shelter, made his bed within his own car, lying in an open field, as
other aeronauts have had to do in like circumstances.
Coxwell tells of a striking phenomenon seen during that voyage. "A
splendid meteor was below the car, and apparently about 600 feet
distant. It was blue and yellow, moving rapidly in a N.E. direction, and
became extinguished without noise or sparks."