EARLY BALLOON DAYS

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 October 1928, Page 12

EARLY BALLOON DAYS

FIRST ASCENT IN BRITAIN.

The inventions and discoveries ultimately proving least beneficial to mankind, have generally been received with greater warmth and enthusiasm than those of a more useful character. The aeronautical experiments of the Montgolfiers and others, in France, created an immense excitement, which soon found its way across the Channel to the shores of England. Horace Walpole, writing at the close of 1783, says: “Balloons occupy senators, philosophers, ladies, everybody.” While some entirely disbelieved the accounts of men, floating as it were in the regions of the upper air, other indulged in the wildest speculations. The author of a poem entitled “The Air Balloon, oi - flying Mortal,” published early in 1784, exclaims:

How few the world evils now I dread, No more confined this narrow earth to tread! Should fire or water spread destruction drear, An earthquake shake this sublunary sphere, In air-balloon to distant realms I fly, And leave the creeping world to sink and die.”

Besides doubt and wonder an unpleasant feeling of insecurity prevailed over England at the time. The balloon was a French invention: might it.not.be used as a means of invasion by the natural enemies of the British race!

A caricature, published in 1874, is entitled “Montgolfier in the Clouds, constructing Air Balloons for the Grands Monarque.” In this, the French inventor is represented blowing soapbubbles and saying: “Dis de be grand invention. Dis will immortalize my king, my country and myself. We will declare the war against our enimie; we will make des English quake. We will inspect their, camp, we will Intercept their fleet, and we will set fire to their dockyards and, we will take Gibraltar, in de air-balloon, and when we have conquer de English, den we conquer de other countrie, and make them all colonie to de Grand Monarque.” Several small balloons had been sent up from various parts of England, but no person adventurous enough to explore the realms of the air, had ascended, until Vincent Lunardi, a youthful attache of the Neapolitan Embassy, made the first ascent in England, from the Artillery Grounds at Moorfields, September 15, 1874. It was Lunardi’s original intention to ascend from the garden of the Chelsea Hospital, having acquired permission to do so, but the permission was subsequently rescinded, on account of a riot caused by another balloon adventurer, a Frenchman named De Moret.

The authorities being apprehensive that in case of failure, Chelsea Hospital might be destroyed in a similar riot, rescinded their permission, but Lunardi was eventually accommodated with the use of the Artillery Grounds, the members of the City Artillery Company being under arms to protect their property. When the eventful day arrived, Moorfields, then an open space of ground, was thronged by dense crowds of spectators. Such a crowd had never previously been collected in London. As the morning hours wore away, silent expectation was followed by impatient clamour, soon succeeded by yells of angry threatenings, to be in a moment changed to loud acclamations of applause as the balloon rose into the air. Lunardi himself said: “The effect was that of a miracle on the multitude which surrounded the place, and they passed from incredulity and menace into the most extravagant expressions of approbation and joy.” Earth was first touched by Lunardi in a field at North Mimms. After lightening the balloon, he again rose in the air, and finally descended in the parish of Standon, near Ware, in Hertfordshire. Some labourers, who were working close by, were so frightened at the balloon that no promises of reward would induce them to approach it, not even when a young woman had courageously set the example by taking hold of a cord which the aeronaut had thrown out. The adventurer came down from the clouds to find himself the hero of the day. He was presented at Court and at once became the fashion; wigs, coats, hats and bonnets were named after him, and a very popular bow of bright scarlet ribbons, that had previously been called Gibraltar, from the heroic defence of that fortress, was now termed the Lunardi.