SOME ACCIDENTS.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 10, 1 August 1907, Page 360

SOME ACCIDENTS.

The loss of the two military aeronauts recalls the stories of former balloon fatalities and narrow escapes by flood and field. Of these the first naturally to recur to the mini! is the loss of the balloon Saladin, with Mr. Powell, M.P. for Malmesbury. On 10th December 1881 Mr. Powell ascended in the War Office balloon Saladin with Captain Templer of the Rifle Corp^ and Mr. Agg-Gardner ot Cheltenham, to take meteorological observations. The balloon started off at 35 miles an hour, maintaining the speed to Exeter. Finding there was danger of being carried out to sea, the aeronuats tried to come down. For some reason, however, this proved difficult ; the car got near the ground, but instead of coming down tore along dragging at a tremendous rate. The balloon being out of control, the aeronauts determined to quit. Captain Taylor and Mr. Gardner jumped out promptly, but Mr. Powell hesitated, and while he still hesitated, the balloon relieved of the weight of the other two suddenly rose up into the air and sailed swiftly out to sea. It was never seen or heard of again. The belief in aero circles was that the rapidity of the ascent caused an escape of gas sufficient to asphyxiate the unhappy rider who had lost the opportunity of jumping. The balloon corps, however, continues its functions just as the submarine goes on regardless of accidents. The loss of the Aldershot balloon the other day is the first fatal accident in the war balloon department since the disappearance of Mr. Powell. The phenomenon of obstinately dragging along the ground at a furious rate was first made known by the exciting trip of M. Nadar, the famous aeronaut photographer of Paris, in the year 1862, in the heyday of the Second Empire. This aeronaut disbelieved in the balloon as against the aeroplane, and conceived the idea of building an immense balloon in order to raise funds for the cost of experiments in natural flying. He availed himself to that end of the principle of the " compensator," by which a second balloon vvithin the main balloon was supplied for the purpose ot receiving the excess of gas produced by dilatation and so prolonging the power of the balloon to stay up in the air. The balloon named, " I,e Geaut," was a

leviathan, 200 feet high, equal to a pressure of 6,000 metres of gas, employing 22,000 yards of silk, and supporting a weight of A\ tons. It started from Champ de Mars with fifteen passengers, viz., M.M. Nadar (Captain) Marcel, Louis, and Jules Godard, all well known aeronauts (lieutenants'!, the Prmcerof Seyn- Wittgenstein, Count de Saint Martin, M. Tournachon, seven others and one lady, the Princess de la Tour d'Auvergne. The last named happened to be passing by and seeing the balloon, pressed so hard to be taken in, that Captain Nadar could not find it in his heart to refuse. When all was ready, Nadar mounted into the network, took off his hat to the big crowd and started the machine with orders to let go. The following rules made by the Captain were subscribed to by the passengers before the start : — 1. Every traveller before mounting must study the rules and engages himself to obey during tne whole of the voyage. 2. The command shall be absolute and there shall be but one captain. 3. The Captain's authority is always to be decisive. 4. Every passenger declares that he carries with him no inflammatory materials. 5. Passengers must co-operate in all the manoeuvres, submit to all the necessities of the service, and must not on landing quit the balloon without the Captain's permission. 6. SilenQe must be ooserved when ordered by the Captain. 7. Victuals and liquors carried up by the travellers must be deposited in a common canteen, of which the Captain alone holds the key. 8. The duration of the journey is entirely for the discretion of the Captain, as also the question of taking on or putting off of passengers. 9. All gambling is strictly prohibited. 10. No passenger to throw overboard anything. 11. Weight of luggage per passenger limited to 30 lbs. 12. No smoking except with the Captain's permission which naturally can only be given under exceptional circumstances. When the balloon had attained a height of 4,000 feet her people saw the sun and afterwards described the effect as marvellous, and as having thrown them into a sort of ecstacy. The balloon took a north-easterly direction, but at nine in the evening suddenly came down at Borcy near Meaux, and dragged badly for about a mile. The passengers all had to take to the ropes and some of them were considerably injured and all were alarmed. It is related that Captain Nadar showed so mucn anxiety about the safet}^ of the fair princess that she rebuked him. " Pvvery one to his post," said the sprightly little lady ; " You keep to yours and I will keep to mine." Later when all were landed safe but bruised, it transpired that they had decided on the sudden descent because they were under the impression that they were near the sea and were being blown out. As a matter of fact, however, they were going on a course which would have kept them over dry land till they reached the Caspian. * Soon afterwards Nadar made another ascent, this time with only eight passengers and carrying Madam Nadar. At nine o'clock they were over Erquelines, and by midnight they were over Holland. From time to time it was necessary to descend to take bearings. : Nobody on board slept, so great was the excitement, conjoined to the fear of falling into : the sea which was present to everyone's mind. " In the morning after a frugal breakfast, l made in the clouds we redescended. An

immense plain was beneath us ; the villagers appeared to us like children's toys, rivers seemed like little rivulets, it was magical. The sun shone splendidly over all. Towards eight o'clock we arrived near a great lake. There we found our bearings and announced that we were at the end of Holland, near the sea." A violent gale arose, the balloon began to race for the ocean, the anchors were hurriedly thrown out but the momentum of the " Geant " snapped them off short, and after a brief rise the balloon fell and began a fearful and giddy career. All disappeared before them, tiees, thickets, walls, all broken or burst through by the shock. Sometimes it was a lake into which the car plunged, then a bog, the thick mud of which entered their mouths and eyes. "It was maddening," writes one of the passengers. " ' Stop ! Stop !' we shouted, enraged with the monster who was dragging us along. A railway was before us, a train passing. It stopped at our cries, but we carried away the telegraph posts and wires. An instant afterwards we perceived in the distance a red house — I see it now — the wind bore us straight for this house. It was death for all for we should be dashed to pieces. No one spoke. Strange to say those nine persons — one of whom was a lady — who were clinging to a slender screen of osier, for whom every second seemed counted, not one had any fear. All tongues were mute, all faces were calm. Nadar held his wife covering her with his body. Poor woman, every shock seemed to break her to pieces. Jules Godard then tried and accomplished an act of sublime heroism. He clambered up into the network, in spite of the shocks, which were so terrible that three times he fell on my head. At last he reached the cord of the valve, opened it. and the gas, having a way to escape, the monster ceased to rise, but it still shot along with prodigious rapidity." Suddenly a forest appeared on the horizon : the voyagers must leap out at whatever risk, for they felt that the car would be dashed to pieces at the first collision with the trees. One jumped and made numerous somersaults falling upon his head. Another was stretched on the soil fearfully wounded, his arm broken, his chest torn, and an ankle dislocated. Nadar had a dislocated thigh, his wife had fallen into a river. But after a time the travellers were picked up, vehicles were brought and they were thus conveyed to Rethen in Hanover. In seventeen hours they had made nearly 275 leagues During the siege of Paris there was a great deal of ballooning, and it showed the same lessons, viz., that it was impossible at times to know the direction, equally impossible to steer out of danger, and very difficult often to perform the simplest functions of aeronauting. The services were performed by experienced aeronauts, such as Tissandier, Nadar, de Fonvielle, Durouf, Godard and others, some of whom had made as many as 800 ascents, and all knew their business well. The first thing they found out of course was that there was no getting back to Paris. That difficulty was, however, to a certain extent got over by sending carrier pigeons with the balloons, which brought messages back of often valuable import, such value in fact that had the conditions of the struggle been less one sided the fate of the besieged might have been changed effectually. The sailors of the French navy did very good service with these balloons. Said one of them one day when asked about the trip he was about to make "Sir, our topsail is high, and hard to reef, but we shall sail all the same, and we shall, please God, arrive at some port."

Another set of men utilised for the service were the professional acrobats from the circuses and street shows. These were not so reliable as the sailors, nor were they so faithful, sometimes escaping down a guide rope leaving balloon passengers and mails in a tight place. But out of 64 balloons despatched, no less than 57 fulfilled their mission so that the authorities had some right to claim that their service had on the whole been a success. The total number of persons who got out of Paris was 175, the weight of despatches carried was nine tons, and the number of letters reached 3,000,000, and the speed varied from 20 to 50 miles an hour for the most part, in one instance getting up to the phenomenal figure of 80. When Gambetta got away in the " Armand Barbes," he got within shooting distance and for a long time the Prussian needle guns were very busy trying to riddle holes in him. He had an extremely narrow escape. Now for the casualties. Three balloons soon after the start of the service fell into the hands of the enemy, and after that, as it was seen that the Prussians were prepared with relays of Uhlans on the roads to follow, and guns of special calibre to shoot, the balloons were sent off only at night. This, however, exposed them to a new danger, the danger ot being taken anywhere but where they wanted. One night the " Ville d'Orleans " rose from Paris with one aeronaut and one passenger and with a north wind blowing it was hoped she would reach Tours in due course during the night. But towards morning the travellers heard the sound of surf under them and when day broke found themselves suspended over the sea out of sight of land. They saved themselves from falling into the sea by throwing away bag after bag of their despatches, and eventually they landed among the wilds of the back country of Norway. Very shortly after that the " Jacquard " went up in charge of a sailor named Prince, sailed down the Bnglish Channel without being able to turn landwards, and hung suspended for a few moments over the Land's End. During that interval Prince threw out his despatches, when he ought to have opened his air valve. As a consequence of his blunder, the balloon rose up at once and darted out with him over the Atlantic disappearing for ever more. Ihe "Jules Favre " followed soon after, and found itself not at Lyons where the skipper expected to be according to the set of the wind, but over the island of Hoedic in the Atlantic and driving furiously seawards. Fortunately the larger island of Belleisle still lay between them and the open ocean. It was seen that they would have to pass one end of it which was very narrow, and that they must either land there or be lost. They tore open the valve with frantic energy, brought the balloon down a thousand feet in a few minutes, and luckily succeeded in striking land. The shock was terrific. Three times did the balloon bounce into the air, and at last, catching against a wall, shot the occupants out on to terra firma. They were badly injured but received much kindness and attention from the people of the country. Some weeks later the " Richard Wallace" got away down to La Rochelle, the people called out to the aeronuat to descend, but he, losing his head threw out ballast frantically and was carried to sea never more to be heard of. Two other balloons fell into the enemy's country and that completes the record of the casualties during the siege of Paris. These stories enable us to realise how the Aldershot officers got out of hand with their balloon the other day.