PROFESSIONAL AERONAUT AND HIS "AIRY WAYS."

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 441, 21 February 1912, Page 6

PROFESSIONAL AERONAUT AND HIS "AIRY WAYS."

- Writing of balloon ascents. Major B. Baden-Powell says :—Tndoubted.y many serious accidents have taken ?lace, and. moreover, many in proportion to the number of ascents. Hence people think the pastime (or business) a dangero'-is one. Put. it is not so black as it is painted. If we inquire into the balloon accidents of the past we tind that with perhaps two or three exceptions, every serious accident has been caused by gross mismanagement, either from ignorance or carelessness.

Again a nd again we read the same sort of story. Some uneducated, ignorant man, probably through utter lack of capacity to get on in other walks of life, announces himself as a professional aeronaut. Not usually Having any very large credit lying waste at his bankers, he economises by purchasing his outfit a.t the lowest possible figure, which means that either he buys some old oalloon in a very doubtful state of soundness, or he sets to work to i-ry and manufacture the article with his own inexperienced hands. Then, with flaring announcements of most daring and sensational feats, he starts his show. A few times he may succeed, but what is more probable is that sooner or later he will have some Occident— and this has occurred over and over again.

I can relate a curious little bit of history illustrating this, which has only lately come fully to my knowLedge. Some years ago I bought a balloon from a professional aeronaut. Though not a new ona, it was sound enough for my purpose. I used it for several ascents, knocked it about a good deal, had it patched and altered, and finalUr stowed it away for some months in a cellar. After that T knew it was probably not trustworthy, and I therefore determined to get rid of it. I asked the maker to buy it back as so much old material. Of course he was only too ready to agree that it was utterly worthless as anything else, and so I parted with it for a few pounds. Some time afterwards I happened "to hear that this very balloon had made another ascent, and I therefore ventured to remind the aeronaut of the exact nature of our transaction, recalling the fact that the price paid was not the market value of a serviceable balloon, and I presumed to advise him against the risk of trusting his life and limb to such worthless old material as he had described it. Then, it seems, he took the matter to heart, and, like me, thought it best to get rid of the thing. So he sold it (history breatheth not whether as "old material" or not) to another professional man named Dale. This man, emulating the magic in Aladdin, had a great invention for converting old balloons into new ones. He took the old "Eclipse" and put it in the pot, and boiled it down, with soda and other chemicals, till all the varnish had disappeared, and left a mass of snow-white cambric as :lean (if not quite as strong) as it was on the day it was born. He /arnished the stuff afresh, and then turned out a splendid-looking balloon quite unrecognisable from the good old "Eclipse," which had its nan>3 in "life-sized" letters painted on it. Some years after, a young naval officer in India became possessed with some idea with regard to balloons and parachutes for military purposes, and with the intention /of putting hit theories to the test, sent home for a balloon. Dale had the very article for him, and shipped it off at once. Poor Manstield made his first ascent it bombay ; but ere he had attained an elevation of 200 or 300 feet the balloon burst asunder and fell to the rround, the unfortunate aeronaut being fatally injured. Meanwhile poor Dale doubtless thought he had found the elexir of life for balloons, and prepared a .second old balloon in ths same way, and, what proves he did not realise the danger or intentionally commit so awful a blunder, made an ascent himself in it, accompanied by hit: sen and others. This balloon . icted in just the way as the Srst, bursting ere it was clear of the Crystal Palace Grounds, and dashing to earth its human freight—Dale and one of his companions being killed, and the others dreadfully injured. Aeronauts and their balloons should both be officially certificated or not allowed to ascend. If this were done, as it is with ships, we should be less often shocked by ac-, sounts of appalling disasters.—'"Ballooning as a Sport." *