The Ups and Downs of Ballooning

Balloon ascensions were an exciting part of the nineteenth century. Some daring individual would set up a balloon in a public space like Hyde Park, and crowds would gather to watch the intrepid adventurer take off and ascend into the skies. In most cases, the balloon would fly a short distance and come down in some field. In a few cases, the event was an attempt to set a record. For example, in 1785, Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries left Dover in the first successful attempt to cross the Channel by balloon.

But sometimes, things did not go as planned.

I discovered the following 1895 graphic not too long ago. It was originally an uncut set of 10 cards showing the early history of ballooning. As you can see, the emphasis appears to be on disasters!

Starting from top left, we have Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Jean-Baptise Biot, who ascended to 4,000 meters to conduct scientific experiments on gas. They lived. So did the second fellow, André-Jacques Garnerin, who, despite the illustration, made the first successful parachute jump from a balloon in 1797. He owed much to the third fellow, Louis-Sebastien Lenormand, who had conceived the idea of a parachute and jumped from a building with his umbrella-like contraption in 1783.

The fourth card on the top row has ideas for every steampunk author! These are purportedly utopian dreams of flight from the “last century.” Some very interesting flights of fancy! Next to it we have Commander Jean-Marie Coutelle at the Siege of Mainz in 1795, where he used a balloon for reconnaissance (and seems to have earned the wrath of the enemy in the process!).

The first card on the bottom row is a balloon commemorating Napoleon’s achievements. Interesting that he is still revered nearly 80 years after his ultimate defeat. I was both delighted and saddened to see my beloved Sophie Blanchard featured on the next card. Of course the artist had to include the queen of aeronauts. But perhaps they might have shown something besides her fiery death!

Next to her is Count Franceso Zambeccari, who flew the first unoccupied balloon in England in 1783, but instead of commemorating that achievement, the artist decided to cover his crash in the Adriatic in 1804. A number of balloons took off from the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, but the artist chose to depict the one from which Thomas Harris fell in 1824. Finally, we have the rescue of Francois Arban by Italian fishers in 1846, after he too had crashed into the Adriatic Sea.

Doesn’t exactly make you want to jump into the next balloon, doesn’t it?

A Lot of Gas…or Was It?

My dear nephew (thanks, Ian!) sent me the following item, which first appeared in the Northampton Mercury on July 23, 1808, and again on the blog of the website britishnewpaperarchive.co.uk roughly two hundred years later. I cannot vouch for its veracity (one of the principals being named "Monsieur Le Pique" does ring a few quiet BS-o-meter alarms in my head), but by gosh, what a story!

I’ll let you be the judge:

Novel Duel.—A very novel species of duel has lately taken place at Paris. M. Grandpree and M. Le Pique having quarreled about Mademoiselle Tirevit, a celebrated opera dancer, who was kept by the former, but was discovered in an intrigue with the latter, a challenge ensued. Being both men of elevated minds, they agreed to fight in balloons, and in order to give time for their preparation, it was determined that the duel should take place on that day month. Accordingly on the 3rd of May the parties met in a field adjoining the Tuilleries [sic], where their respective balloons were ready to receive them. Each, attended by his second, ascended his car, loaded with blunderbusses, as pistols could not be expected to be efficient in their probable situations. A multitude attended, hearing of the balloons, but little dreaming of the purpose: the Parisians merely looked for the novelty of a balloon race. At nine o’clock the cords were cut, and the balloons ascended majestically amidst the shouts of the spectators. The wind was moderate, blowing from the north north west, and they kept, as far as could be judged, within about 80 yards of each other. When they had mounted to the height of about 900 yards, M. Le Pique fired his piece ineffectually; almost immediately after the fire was returned by M. Grandpree, and penetrated his adversary’s balloon; the consequence of which was its rapid descent, and M. Le Pique and his second were both dashed to pieces on a house-top, over which the balloon fell. The victorious Grandpree then mounted aloft in the grandest style, and descended safe, with his second, about seven leagues from the spot of ascension.

See the original post here: https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2012/08/24/the-first-duel-fought-in-hot-air-balloons-paris-1808/

What do you think? Did it really happen, or did an editor at the Northampton Mercury think that the July 23 issue needed a little sprucing up and concocted the tale out of whole cloth, journalistic rigor not yet having the importance it does in modern times?

Whether it did or not, dear readers, this is what makes studying history so much fun!

Guest Post: Ballooning and the Lunardi Craze, by Shelley Adina

Nineteen Teen is delighted to welcome back Shelley Adina, author extraordinaire and Regina's co-author on the Regent's Devices series, for a discussion of ... balloon fashion. Yes, really!

Balloon flight at once intrigues and terrifies me. I’ve been up in a Zeppelin airship, but that was much more exciting than frightening. The technology probably gave me a false sense of security, with its cockpit, two pilots, and propellers galore. Going up in a balloon with only a fire to heat the air and a wicker basket between me and death makes me want to adhere most positively to the ground!

Balloon flight was not invented during the Regency, but in France by the Montgolfier brothers. They had been experimenting with ascents for some time, but achieved the first free-floating manned flight in 1783. As little as a year later, a positive craze for hot-air ballooning had spread to England, where in London “the daredevil aeronaut,” Vincenzo Lunardi, went aloft with a dog, a cat, and a pigeon in a cage. (It is not clear what purpose these companions were to serve.)

As often happens, novelty and massive, fascinated crowds combined to inspire a fashion craze. Balloons might become part of one’s gown, one image showing them on the sides like external panniers, in place of the usual drawn-up outer gown. The caption in French reads, “The coquettish physicist.” And the hats! In the coquettish physicist’s hair is fixed a base that looks like a fairground, the balloon floating up out of it.  

These mad embellishments were not restricted to women—-men wore clothes with decorative homages to the new fad. One drawing of a man wearing rigging similar to that on the top of a balloon says in French, “The man of balloons, or, the folly of the day,”  A creative woman might embroider her gown’s fabric with balloons, or paint its cotton panels.

Like many fads, something that was meant to be highly visible but not very comfortable didn’t last long. The hat lasted the longest, but not the kind with actual balloons ascending from it. The Lunardi bonnet is seen in a painting dated 1782. This style lasted well into the Regency, and is fetchingly worn by Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood and Gemma Jones as Mrs Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1995). Want your own Lunardi bonnet? A very nice version is available on Etsy!

Resources:

https://www.janeausten.co.uk/british-ballooning/

http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/flying-fashion.html

https://nineteenteen.blogspot.com/search?q=balloon

Free to Fly, Free to Read

Nearly 10 years ago (how time flies, like this nineteenth century heroine!), I introduced you to Marie Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Napoleon’s Chief Air Minister. Sophie’s story refused to leave me alone, so I’ve continued to research her and her accomplishments. They have only made her more fascinating!

Sophie was a nervous little thing—afraid of loud noises, afraid of riding in carriages. But she found her strength in an unlikely place—taking death-defying rides in hydrogen balloons! She was the only female balloonist at the time to take solo flights. She was one of the only aeronauts to toss out fireworks from her balloon to the thrill of the crowds. She went higher and farther than many male balloonists. Her one failure?

She could not give Napoleon what he most wanted—a balloon invasion of England.

England ruled the waves at the time. Crossing the Channel by ships filled with the vast French forces Napoleon needed to invade would have seen many if not all of the vessels, and their occupants, sinking below the water. But if balloons could be launched, Napoleon reasoned, they might be set down on the very shores of England, if not the Prince Regent’s front lawn!

Sophie knew better. The prevailing winds ran up the Channel, not across it. Only a few, her famous husband, Jean-Pierre Blanchard among them, had crossed the Channel by balloon, and always from England to France. The state of ballooning at the time, with little way to maneuver the craft aside from rising or falling to catch the wind, meant there was no way to fight the air currents. Jean-Pierre’s Channel crossing craft had had wings on the sides, allegedly to pilot the craft. Sophie knew they had been for show only. Her husband had been a visionary, but few of his devices ever worked.

Until their daughter made them work. Yes, I am delighted to report that my research into Sophie Blanchard is about the bear fruit. Look for Celeste Blanchard to star alongside intrepid British inventor Loveday Penhale in May’s The Emperor’s Aeronaut!

Napoleon is determined to conquer the world with his steam-powered weapons. Nothing in England can stop him … except two young lady inventors.

In 1819, France is surrounded by armies. With Russia in the north, the Karlsruhe Confederacy in the east, and a pirate kingdom in the south, Napoleon cannot break out, nor can the English Navy seem to break in. Europe  teeters on the edge of a sword. Whichever side rules the air will win.

Celeste Blanchard, daughter of the Emperor’s disgraced Air Minister, is running out of time to develop an air ship that can carry his armies to England and restore her mother to glory. But on a daring and desperate test flight, she is blown off course … and washes up, half drowned, on the shores of Cornwall, in the heart of enemy territory.

Loveday Penhale, cosseted daughter of gentry, has her own inventions to build, even as pressure mounts to behave like a proper young lady and seek a husband instead of a design for a high-pressure steam engine. But when Arthur Trevelyan, heir to the neighboring estate, Gwynn Place, asks for her help in rescuing an unconscious young woman on the beach, Loveday discovers an aeronaut and an inventor as skilled as she is. Between them, a friendship blossoms, and Loveday wonders if they might even pull off the impossible and invent an air ship that will catch the eye of the Tinkering Prince Regent, who has offered a prize to anyone who can help England break the impasse. Celeste’s loyalties are torn in two. If she is caught working secretly for France, she will lose her friend, the love of an honorable man—and her life. But if Napoleon learns she has betrayed him, she will be executed on sight. 

Can friendship prevail in the face of war? Or is there a third solution—one where everything hinges on the bravery and daring of a Cornish debutante and the Emperor’s aeronaut?

Available for preorder at

Amazon 

Apple Books 

Kobo 

Barnes and Noble 

Google Play 

In the meantime, I am also delighted to report that The Matchmaker’s Rogue is free from now through March 22 at fine online retailers.

The admired hostess of the spa in the little village of Grace-by-the-Sea, Jesslyn Chance plays matchmaker to those who come to take the waters, promenade through the shops, and dance at the assembly. But when a rogue returns from her past, Jess finds herself suddenly at sea. Larkin Denby is back on a mission: to identify the mysterious Lord of the Smugglers who takes England’s secrets to France. As Jess works with Lark to uncover the fellow, the matchmaker may find that the best match for her is the rogue who stole her heart years ago.

Smashwords  

Amazon 

Barnes and Noble 

Apple Books 

Kobo 

Feel free to fly!

Retro Blast: Up, Up and Away

Ah, the warm days of summer roll on, and my eyes are drifting to the skies, where I'll soon be flying off to our writers conference, otherwise known as Regina and Marissa's annual sleepover. In the meantime, I couldn't help revisiting another mode of flight--ballooning. Enjoy!

The nineteenth century saw the birth of many inventions we take for granted today, but few were viewed with greater awe and anticipation than the hot air balloon. Crowds gathered every time the basket and uninflated balloon arrived on a wagon and watched as the bag was filled and the balloon rose into the sky. Ascensions, as they were called, were plentiful around London, from the various parks and Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Young ladies swooned over the prospect of being lifted aloft, and young men dreamed of being aeronauts. One of the most practiced in the art was Charles Green.

Green was the son of a fruit merchant. But he grew interested in ballooning in school and went on to build his own balloons and fly them. He also had a theory that coal-gas would be a more convenient and safer fuel than hydrogen gas, which was widely used at the time. At the request of the government, Green ascended from one of the London parks on George IV’s coronation day (July 19, 1821) in the first balloon filled with coal-gas. The crowds went wild.

But Green wasn’t finished with stunts. In August 1828, he took a pony aboard with him, ascended from the Eagle Tavern in London, and came down thirty minutes later in Kent. The proprietors from Vauxhall were so impressed they commissioned him to build them a balloon for the delight of their customers. He liked it so much he bought it back from them but continued to ascend from Vauxhall, taking groups of people around England.

In 1836, Robert Hollond, a member of Parliament representing Hastings, funded Green to fly the balloon from Vauxhall to Germany. Hollond and his friend Thomas Monck Mason had both dreamed of being aeronauts but had settled for more prosaic occupations. The two joined Green at Vauxhall for a grand send off, crossed the channel to Dover, and reached the countryside on the outskirts of Weilburg in Germany. They had traveled a total of 500 miles over land and sea in 18 hours. The record would not be broken until 1907. Green’s fame was assured.

But however much the crowds idolized the aeronauts and dreamed of flying themselves, ballooning was not for the faint of heart. Green set the record for a time for height, reaching more than 27,000 feet, with temperatures well below freezing. He fought his way through thunderstorms and rode the winds aloft at times nearly 100 miles an hour. He piloted a balloon where one of the first parachutes was tested (at the loss of life of the man testing it!). Once someone severed the ropes attaching the basket to the balloon, and he and his passenger had to climb onto the mesh of the balloon to survive. Still, by the time he retired, he had ascended more than 500 times!

The British Balloon and Airship Club still awards the Charles Green Salver for exceptional flying or contributions to the field of ballooning.

Me? I’m afraid I’m one of those terribly practical people who prefer their feet to remain safely on the ground!

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Lighter Than Air

Some of you will remember a series I did a while ago at QNPoohBear's suggestion of real-life nineteenth century ladies who were inspiring enough to be heroines in a book.  We talked about Caroline Herschel’s stargazing, Ada Byron’s mathematical computing, and Mary Anning’s dinosaur hunting.  I recently stumbled upon another lady I simply had to add to the list:  the commander of Napoleon’s balloon army, Sophie Blanchard.

You wouldn’t think ballooning would be a career for a lady in the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century, much less leading a squadron of armed forces for a major power.  Sophie was one of a handful of women who ventured up in balloons, and one of the only ones skilled enough to go up alone.  Born in 1778 in France, Sophie was a nervous girl who disliked riding in carriages and startled at loud noises.  We don’t know a great deal about her early life, but somewhere between the ages of 16 and 26, she married one of the premiere balloonists of the day, Jean-Pierre Blanchard. 

Jean-Pierre was a showman who had already toured Europe and America, helped pioneer the parachute, and set records around the world.  Unfortunately, he hadn’t a lick of business sense and was always in debt.  In hopes of recovering, he added Sophie to his act, and the two were popular sights for coronations, royal birthdays, the opening of major buildings, and the like.  Sophie was undaunted by the dangers of balloon flight, claiming at one point that she’d rather sleep in a balloon than on land.  She flew high enough that she nearly passed out from lack of oxygen, she risked freezing at the cold temperatures aloft, and once she almost drown when her balloon landed in a swamp. 

She performed so many times for Napoleon, both with her husband and solo, that he made her the Aeronaut of Official Festivities.  Determined to reach England by any way possible, he also appointed her the Chief Air Minister of Ballooning and asked her to draw up plans for how he could fly his army over the Channel to attack.  Sophie is reported to have had little faith in the venture.  Balloons at that time had few ways to control them, and she recognized, even if Napoleon did not, that the wind generally blew the wrong way.

Tragedy struck the couple in 1809 when Jean-Pierre had a heart attack while performing and fell from his balloon to his death.  Sophie, however, continued to perform.  Despite the fact that she was afraid of loud noises, she perfected an act in which she lighted fireworks and tossed them by parachute from her balloon to the delighted crowds below.  Her vehicle of choice was a hydrogen-filled balloon with a tiny basket below.  She flew to celebrate the marriage of Napoleon to Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810 and on Napoleon’s 42nd birthday in 1811.  She flew over Paris and threw down leaflets proclaiming the birth of Napoleon’s son.  She also performed in Germany, Rome, and the Alps.

I wish I had a happy ending for you.  Unfortunately, it seems Sophie and Jean-Pierre had no children, or at least none that survived beyond infancy.  In July 1819, Sophie was performing at the Tivoli Gardens in Paris when her balloon caught fire and she too fell to her death, entangled in the cords of her basket.  All proceeds from the event were used to build her a monument in a Paris cemetery. 

But Sophie wasn’t forgotten.  Jules Vernes mentioned her in Five Weeks in a Balloon, proving that, nearly 50 years after her death, her amazing accomplishments lived on.

In Which One of the Bloggers Desperately Tries to Find Some Unifying Title for a Lot of Snippets of Information and Fails Miserably

First, thank you all for your kind words on the release of Betraying Season—they’re very much appreciated! For one last bit of book release fun, I offer this video from M2 Productions, which I am smitten with:



Second, the winner of the drawing from Friday for a signed copy of Betraying Season is Miss Eliza! Miss E, please contact me here so we can arrange to have your book sent to you.

In the snippets department, I’ve been fortunate to acquire a number of issues of a magazine called The Mirror dating from 1824 and 1825. They make fascinating reading: what do you think of the illustration here for a proposed tunnel to be built under the Thames in the May 22, 1824 issue?

Then there’s this extract from an article about ballooning, entitled “On Aerial Travelling”, from the June 19, 1824 issue:

"We have yet to contrast this mode of travelling with that in ordinary rides, over which it maintains a vast ascendancy—you have not to tolerate those perpetually recurring delays occasioned by changing the cattle [horses]…no tiresome tax is levied by coachmen or guards…you are free…from the uncomfortable snatches of refreshment they may choose to provide which, however unpalatable, you are obliged to discuss amidst a heterogeneous assemblage as diverse in their tastes as in their appearance and manners…”

Hmm…flight delays? Extra charges for luggage? Bad airline food? Sounds like the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And last, there are lawyer jokes. No, I’m not kidding. How about this bit from the December 24, 1825 edition?

"Saint Evona, a lawyer of Britain, went to Rome to entreat the pope to give the lawyers a patron; the pope replied that he knew no saint not disposed of to some other profession. His holiness proposed, however, to saint Evona, that he should go round the church of San Giovanni di Laterano blindfold, and after saying a certain number of Ave Marias, the first saint he laid hold of should be his patron. This the good old lawyer undertook, and at the end of his Ave Marias, happened to stop at the altar of saint Michael, where he laid hold not of the saint, but unfortunately of the figure of the devil under the saint’s feet, crying out, “This is our saint, let him be our patron!”

Ah yes—the more things change…!