Part 6 (1/2)
Welsh made, in all, four ascents in the suive the highest praise to his colleague, Green, whose control over his balloon he describes as ”so complete that none who accompanied him can be otherwise than relieved from all apprehension, and free to devote attention calmly to the work before hiust the 17th, under a south wind and with clouds covering sonificant, and will be appreciated by anyone who has attempted observational work in a balloon He states naively that ”a short time was lost at first in an attempt to put the instruments into more convenient order, and also from the novelty of the situation” Then he mentions an observation which, in the experience of the writer, is a coh and not near the balloon, were passed without being noticed; other clouds were passed at different heights; and, finally, a few star-shaped crystals of snow; but the sun shone almost constantly Little variation occurred in the direction of travel, which averaged thirty-eight miles an hour, and the descent took place at 520 pe
The second ascent took place at 443 pentle east wind and a partially obscured sky The clouds were again passed without being perceived This was at the height of 3,000 feet, beyond which was very clear sky of deep blue The air currents up to the li directions The descent occurred near Chesham at 745 pm
The third ascent, at 235 pm on October the 21st waswithin 3,000 and 3,700 feet
The sun was then seen shi+ning through cirrus far up The shadow of the balloon was also seen on the cloud, fringed with a glory, and about this tith in a serpentine course, over the surface of the cloud, a well-defined belt, having the appearance of a broad road”
Being now at 12,000 feet, Green thought it prudent to reconnoitre his position, and, finding they were near the sea, descended at 420 ph, in Essex Some important notes on the polarisation of the clouds were e wasfifty knots from the north-east Thin scud was met at 1,900 feet, and an upper stratuht sun The main shi+ft of wind took place just as the upper surface of the first stratureatest elevation, 22,930 feet, when both Green and himself experienced considerable difficulty in respiration and , a hasty descent was made, andhis results Welsh states that ”the teht above the earth's surface until at a certain elevation, varying on different days, decrease is arrested, and for the space of 2,000 or 3,000 feet the teular dienerally htly less rapid than in the lower part of the ather temperature than would have existed but for the interruption noticed” The analysis of the upper air showed the proportion of oxygen and nitrogen to vary scarcely more than at different spots on the earth
As it is necessary at this point to take leave of the veteran Green as a practical aeronaut, we may here refer to one or two noteworthy facts and incidents relating to his eventful career In 1850 M Poitevin is said to have attracted 140,000 people to Paris to look at an exhibition of hi in a balloon seated on horseback, after which Madame Poitevin ascended fro intended as a representation of ”Europa on a Bull”
This, however, was discountenanced by the authorities and withdrawn
The feats were, in reality, merely the repetitions of one that had been conceived and extreo, in fact, as 1828, when he arranged to le Tavern, City Road, seated on a pony To carry out his intention, he discarded the ordinary car, replacing it with a small platform, which was provided with places to receive the pony's feet; while straps attached to the hoop were passed under the ani any violent movement This the creature seemed in no way disposed to attempt, and when all had been successfully carried out and an easy descent effected at Beckenha a meal of beans hich it had been supplied
Several interesting observations have been recorded by Green on different occasions, sohly instructive from a practical or scientific point of view On an ascent from Vauxhall, in which he was accompanied by his friend Spencer and Mr Rush, he recorded how, as he constantly and soed its direction froh N to NE, while he re on its axis This continual swinging or revolving of the balloon Green considers an accompaniment of either a rapid ascent or descent, but it may be questioned whether it is notcurrents, or, soiven inadvertently to the balloon at the e which he describes in the upper currents is highly interesting, and tallies hat the writer has frequently experienced over London proper Such higher currents may be due to natural environ over so vast and varied a city, and they may be able to play an all-i This point will be touched on later In this particular voyage Green records that as he was rising at the moment when his baroistered 46 degrees, while on coain rees It will not fail to be recognised that there is doubtless here an exas taken in ascent and descent
A calculation made by Green in his earlier years has a certain value By the time he had accomplished 200 ascents he was at pains to compute that he had travelled across country some 6,000 miles, which had been traversed in 240 hours From this it would follow that the es will be about twenty-five miles per hour
Towards the end of his career we find it stated by Lieutenant G Grover, RE, that ”the Messrs Green, Father and Son, have made between them some 930 ascents, in none of which have they met with any material accident or failure” This is wonderful testimony, indeed, and we may here add the fact that the father took up his own father, then at the age of eighty-three, in a balloon ascent of 1845, without any serious consequences But it is tiiven of a particular occasion which at least provided the famous aeronaut with an adventure spiced with no small amount of risk It was on the 5th of July, 1850, that Green ascended, with Rush as his companion, fro, as always, the great Nassau balloon The rate of rise must have been very considerable, and they presently record an altitude of no less than 20,000 feet, and a te They were now above the clouds, where all view of earth was lost, and, not venturing to re in this situation, they co below found the down Sea Reach in the direction of Nore Sands, when they observed a vessel Their chance ofland was, to say the least, uncertain, and Green, considering that his safety lay in bespeaking the vessel's assistance, opened the valve and brought the car down in the water so 845, and only fifty-fivestiffly, and, catching the hollow of the half-inflated balloon, carried the voyagers rapidly down the river, too fast, indeed, to allow of the vessel's overtaking the soon apparent, Green cast out his anchor, and not without result, for it shortly becaled in a sunken wreck, and the balloon was pro in the broken water A neighbouring barge at once put off a boat to the rescue, and other boats were despatched by HM
cutter Fly, under Co Green and Rush were speedily rescued, but the balloon itself was too restive and dangerous an object to approach with safety At Green's suggestion, therefore, a volley of musketry was fired into the silk' after which it becaas Green subsequently relates how it took a fortnight to restore the daores
Green's name will always be famous, if only for the fact that it was he who first adopted the use of coal gas in his calling This, it will be remembered, was in 1821, and it should be borne in as had only recently been introduced In point of fact, it first lighted Pall Mall in 1805, and it was not used for the general lighting of London till 1814
We are not surprised to find that the great aeronaut at one time turned his attention to the construction of models, and this with no inconsiderable success A model of his was exhibited in 1840 at the Polytechnic Institution, and is described in the Ti of a as It was acted on by fans, which were operated by mechanism placed in the car A series of three experihted so as to re, the mechanis
The fans were then reversed, when the racefully, descended to the floor Lastly, the balloon, with a weighted trail rope, being once more balanced in mid-air, the fans were applied laterally, when thethe trail rope after it, with an attached weight dragging along the floor until the ain remained stationary The correspondent of the Times continues, ”Mr Green states that by these sie across the Atlantic may be performed in three or four days, as easily as from Vauxhall Gardens to Nassau”
We can hardly attribute this statement seriously to one who kneell as did Green how fickle are the winds, and how utterly different are the conditions between the still air of a rooht into the difficulties of the problem cannot have been less than that of his successor, coxwell, who, as the result of his own equally wide experience, states positively, ”I could never iuide a balloon, much less to enable a man or a machine to fly” Even when modern invention had produced a , coxwell declares his conviction that inherent difficulties would not be overcome ”unless the air should invariably remain in a calm state”
It would be tedious and scarcely instructive to inquire into the various for machines that were elaborated at this period; but one that was designed in America by Mr Henson, and hich it was seriously contemplated to attempt to cross the Atlantic, may be briefly described In theory it was supposed to be capable of being sustained in the air by virtue of the speed le at which its advancing under surface would meet the air The inventor claihtness as well as efficiency, and for the rest his e aero-plane propelled by fans with oblique vanes, while a tail so that of a bird was added, as also a rudder, the functions of which were to direct the craft vertically and horizontally respectively
Be it here recorded that the machine did not cross the Atlantic
One word as to the instru altitudes These were, in general, ordinary mercurial barometers, protected in various ways Green encased his instrument in a si easily read
This instruenerally to be seen held in his hand in Green's old portraits, ht be mistaken for a mariner's telescope It is now in the possession of the farandchildren of his old aeronautical friend and colleague, and it is stated that with all his care the glass was not infrequently broken in a descent
Wise, with characteristic ingenuity, devised a rough-and-ready height instrument, which he claims to have answered well It consisted simply of a common porter bottle, to the neck of which was joined a bladder of the sa filled with air of the density of that on the ground, and the bladder tied on in a collapsed state, the expansion of the air in the bottle would gradually fill the bladder as it rose into the rarer regions of the atmosphere Experience would then be trusted to enable the aeronaut to judge his height from the amount of inflation noticeable in the bladder
CHAPTER XII HENRY coxWELL AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
Mention should be ht sail of a hundred miles, boldly carried out in 1849 by M Arban, which took the voyager from Marseilles to Turin fairly over the Alps The main summit was reached at 11 p under the moon, and the ravines and rocks produced antic picture” Arban was at one tihest point of Mont Blanc, the top of which, standing out well above the clouds, rese with a thousand fires”
In London, in the year of the Great Exhibition, and while the building was still standing in Hyde Park, there occurred a balloon incident small in itself, but sufficient to cause much sensation at the crowded spot where it took place The ascent was made from the Hippodrome by Mr and Mrs Graha liberated, the balloon see a considerable rent