12 See Raymonde Fontaine, La Manche en ballon, Paris, 1982, pp.67–72
13 Thomas Baldwin, Airopaedia, or Narrative of a Balloon Excursion from Chester in 1785, London, 1786, p.204
14 J.E. Hodgson, The History of Aeronautics in Great Britain, Oxford, 1924, pp.132, 131
15 Blanchard, Journal of my Forty-Fifth Ascension, Paris, 1793
16 Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
17 David King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin, London 1999, p.187
18 Joseph Banks, The Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Banks, Vol. 2, 1782–1784, Neil Chambers, Pickering & Chatto, London, 2007, Letter 380
19 Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder, London, 2008, pp.135–6
20 Joseph Banks, Letter 377
21 Richard Hamblyn, Terra: Tales of the Earth, London, 2010, p.121
22 See ‘Balloon Flying Handbook’, Federal Aviation Authority, official website; and ‘Balloon Lift Statistics’, Chemistry Hawaii, official website
23 Tiberius Cavallo, FRS, A Treatise on the History and Practice of Aerostation, London, 1785, pp.164–5
24 Ibid., pp.192–3
25 Ibid., pp.144–7
26 Ibid., p.189
27 Ibid., p.323
28 Cyrano de Bergerac, Journey to the Moon, translated by Andrew Brown, Hesperus Classics, London, 2007, pp.36, 34
29 Cyrano de Bergerac, Comical History of the Moon, partially reprinted in Astra Castra, pp.390–5 (see Bibliography)
30 See Robert Poole, Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth, Yale, 2008, pp.1–2
CHAPTER 2: FIERY PROSPECTS
1 Sophia Banks’s scrapbook, British Library LR.301.3
2 Ibid., item no. 48c
3 Ibid., items nos 41t, 43t, 43b
4 Reported by Lieutenant G.E. Grover, Military Ballooning, 1862, p.9
5 See Wilfrid de Fonvielle, ‘La Premiere Compagnie des Aérostiers’, Aventures aériennes, pp.117–39
6 See I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763–3749, OUP, 1993
7 Rolt, pp.104–9
8 Hodgson, pp.218–20
9 Christopher Hatton Turnor, Astra Castra: Experiments and Adventures in the Atmosphere, London, 1865, p.115
10 Jacques Garnerin, Three Aerial Voyages, 1803; Patrick Stephens, The Romance of Ballooning: The Story of the Early Aeronauts, Patrick Stephens Ltd with Edita Lausanne, 1971, p.78
11 John Wise, Through the Air, 1873, pp.127, 129
12 Rolt, p.108
13 Raspe, ‘‘The Frolic’, Chapter XII, The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, London, 1895
14 La Part du rêve: De la Montgolfière au Satellite, Grand Palais exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1983; Dictionnaire universelle, 1854, p.216
15 J. Martin, The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics, HarperCollins, 2000, p.466
16 A facsimile of this letter, together with several of Lisa Garnerin’s posters, appears in F.L. Bruel, Histoire aéronautique, 1909
17 Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 89, Part 2, July 1819, pp.76–7
18 John Poole, Crotchets in the Air, 1838, pp.79–80; reprinted in Astra Castra, pp.399–414
19 Monck Mason, Aeronautica, or Sketches Illustrative of the Theory and Practice of Aerostation, London, 1838, pp.261–2; Hodgson, pp.223–4; Rolt, pp.115–16
20 Aeronautica, p.263
21 Ibid., p.262; Hodgson, pp.223–4; Rolt, pp.115–16
22 Hodgson, p.224
23 La Part du rêve; and Hodgson, p.207, Fig. 65
24 Jane Loudon, The Mummy!, London, 1827, pp.50, 123, 217
25 Ibid., p.83
CHAPTER 3: AIRY KINGDOMS
1 Elaine Freedgood, Victorian Writing About Risk, CUP, 2000, pp.74–81
2 Mary Shelley, The Last Man, Vol. 1, 1825
3 See Mary Shelley, Journal, 4 August 1816
4 Mayhew in Astra Castra, pp.223ff. The largely satirical accounts of flying with Green, by Poole and Smith, can also be found in Astra Castra
5 Rolt, p.120
6 Aeronautica, pp.151–2
7 Rolt, pp.117–21
8 New Zealand government: Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) Interim Report No. 12-001, Carterton, 7 January 2012
9 Aeronautica, p.49; Rolt, p.124
10 Aeronautica, p.33
11 Ibid., p.40
12 Ibid., p.46
13 Ibid., p.49
14 Ibid., pp.52–3
15 Gaston Flammarion, in Travels in the Air, London, 1871, p.207
16 Aeronautica, p.55
17 Ibid., p.57
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., p.59
20 Ibid., pp.59–60; there is a slightly different version in Stephens, p.89
21 Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall’, 1835; in Astra Castra
22 For the view that Poe rather than Mary Shelley was the father/mother of science fiction, see Adam Roberts, ‘An Infinity Plus Introduction to Hans Pfaall’, 2002. Internet website Infinityplus
23 Aeronautica, pp.62–3
24 Ibid., p.65
25 Ibid., pp.68, 70. William Parry made four major expeditions into the Arctic, in 1819, 1821, 1824 and 1827
26 Ibid., pp.66–7
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., pp.66–8 and footnote
29 Ibid., p.77 and the not entirely reassuring footnote by Mason
30 Rolt, p.124
31 Thomas Hood, ‘Ode to Messrs Green …’, poem, 1836
32 Aeronautica, pp.175–86
33 Ibid., p.171
34 Ibid., p.183
35 Elaine Freedgood, Victorian Writing About Risk, CUP, 2000, pp.74–81
36 John Poole, ‘Crotchets in the Air’, 1838; reprinted in Astra Castra, pp.408–10
37 Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall’, 1842, lines 119ff
38 Aeronautica, p.26
39 Ibid., p.21
40 Charles Green interview, Astra Castra, pp.179–80
41 Daniel Burgoyne, ‘Coleridge and Poe’s Scientific Faith’, Romanticism on the Net, February 2001
CHAPTER 4: ANGEL’S EYE
1 Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851, pp.295–7
2 Illustrated London News, 18 September 1852
3 Charles Dickens, ‘Vauxhall Gardens by Day’, Sketches by Boz, 1836
4 Charles Dickens, Household Words, Contents Index, British Library X981/10221
5 Richard Hengist Horne, ‘Ballooning’, Household Words, Vol. IV, 25 October 1851
6 Charles Dickens, ‘Lying Awake’, Household Words, 30 October 1852
7 Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico
8 ‘Newcastle on Fire’, Illustrated London News, 14 October 1854
9 David Coke and Alan Borg, Vauxhall Gardens: A History, Yale UP, 2011
CHAPTER 5: WILD WEST WIND
1 Tom D. Crouch, The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of Ballooning in America, Smithsonian Institution, 1983, pp.222–4
2 Ibid., p.224
3 Ibid., pp.234–5
4 Ibid., pp.227–9
5 Wise, Through the Air, 1873, pp.27–31
6 Ibid., p.248; Crouch, pp.183–4
7 Wise, A System of Aeronautics, 1850, pp.260–1; Crouch, pp.186–7
8 Wise, 1850, p.261
9 Charles M. Evans, War of the Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning in the Civil War, Stackpole Books, USA, 2002, p.31
10 Crouch, p.189
11 Ibid., pp.197ff
12 Wise, 1873, Chapter XLV, p.530
13 Wise, 1850, p.261
14 Rolt, p.141; Crouch, p.248
15 Brian Holden Reid, The Civil War and the Wars of the Nineteenth Century, series editor John Keegan, Smithsonian Books, USA, 2006
16 Crouch, p.249
17 Rolt, pp.141–2
18 Wise, 1873, p.494
19 Crouch, p.689
20 Wise, 1873, p.510
21 Crouch, p.254
22 Wise, 1873, pp.493–4
r /> 23 Ibid., p.499
24 Ibid., p.508
25 Charles Dickens diary – letter to John Forster, see Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. 3, 1872–74, pp.240–60, 1842
26 Stephens, p.96
27 Wise, 1873, p.504
28 Ibid., pp.504–7
29 Ibid., p.507
30 Ibid., p.508
31 Stephens, p.96; Rolt, p.141
32 Wise, 1873, p.508; Crouch, p.252
33 Wise, 1873, p.509
34 Wise, 1873, pp.508–10; Crouch, pp.252–3;
35 Wise, 1873, p.513
36 Ibid., p.510
37 Ibid., p.514
38 Ibid., p.518
39 Crouch, p.254
40 Wise, 1873, pp.517–18
41 Crouch, pp.255–61
42 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.1
43 Lowe, My Balloons in Peace and War, p.3, quoted Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.39
44 Lowe, My Balloons, quoted Crouch, p.264
45 Crouch, p.264
46 Ibid., p.275
47 Ibid., p.276
48 Lowe, My Balloons, pp.32–4
49 Crouch, p.277
CHAPTER 6: SPIES IN THE SKY
1 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.63
2 Reid, p.77. West Virginia refused to secede and was admitted to the Union in 1863
3 Ibid., p.86
4 Ibid., p.81
5 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.261
6 Crouch, p.368
7 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.9
8 Crouch, p.277
9 Ms of Lowe’s letter held in Library of Congress, and quoted Crouch, p.346
10 Lowe, My Balloons, p.69; Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.73
11 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.85
12 Crouch, pp.343–4
13 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.130
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., pp.98–9, 130
16 Ibid., p.143
17 Lowe, My Balloons, p.194
18 Reid, pp.77–80
19 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.133
20 For more on Lowe’s wartime experiences, see Gail Jarrow, Lincoln’s Flying Spies, USA, 2010; and Stephen Poleskie, The Balloonist: The Story of T.S.C. Lowe, USA, 2007, a partly fictionalised biography
21 Lowe, My Balloons, p.113
22 Detroit Press, ‘The Yankee Balloon’, 1886, quoted ibid.
23 George Townsend (newspaper reporter), ‘Fitzjohn Porter Views the Confederate Army from a Balloon’, quoted in Henry Steele Commager, The Blue and the Gray, Vol. 1, 1950
24 Lowe, My Balloons, pp.29–30
25 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.184
26 Lowe, My Balloons, p.32
27 Ibid., passim
28 Lowe, ‘The Balloons with the Army of the Potomac: A Personal Reminiscence’, p.3; quoted in Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.329. See also the Lowe website at civilwarhome.com
29 Lowe, My Balloons, p.86
30 Henry Coxwell, My Life and Balloon Experiences, London, 1887, p.178
31 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.167. However, it is difficult to believe that some aerial photographs will not eventually be found in the ever-expanding Civil War archives
32 Lowe, ‘The Balloons with the Army of the Potomac’, p2
33 Ibid., p.1
34 Reid, p.92
35 Crouch, p.387
36 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, pp.168–9
37 St James’s Magazine, 1863, pp.96–105, quoted Crouch, p.387
38 Lieutenant G.E. Grover, Military Ballooning, 1862, p.21; also quoted in Coxwell, p.178
39 Frederick Beaumont and George Grover, On Balloon Reconnaissances, 1863, British Library X639/1795
40 General George C. Custer, ‘War Memoirs’, The Galaxy: A Magazine of Entertaining Reading, Vol. XXII, November 1876, pp.685–7; see also Evans, War of the Aeronauts, pp.184–8; Crouch, pp.383–6 and note p.699
41 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, pp.205–6. The documentary discovery of the real ‘silk dress balloon’ must largely be credited to the brilliant archival research of Charles M. Evans
42 Cheeves to Longstreet, 1896, from ibid., p.206
43 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.236
44 Crouch, p.394
45 Lowe, My Balloons, p.143
46 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.237
47 Ibid., p.222
48 Ibid., p.223
49 Ibid., p.235
50 Ibid., p.228; Lowe, My Balloons, p.135
51 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.240
52 Opinion of Major-General A.W. Creeley, cited in Lowe, My Balloons, p.140
53 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.243
54 Ibid., pp.242–3
55 Lowe, My Balloons, p.145
56 Ann Rinaldi, Girl in Blue, USA, 1988, pp.199–200
57 General James Longstreet, Century Magazine, 1896, quoted Crouch, p.393
58 Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Part 33, composed c.1867, partly about the Civil War: ‘By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient …’
59 Stephen Crane, ‘The Price of the Harness’, Scribner’s Magazine, September 1898
60 Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage, 1895
61 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.299
62 Lowe, My Balloons, pp.204–5
63 Ibid., p.208
64 Evans, War of the Aeronauts, p.308
65 Ibid., p.309
66 Ibid.
CHAPTER 7: GIGANTIC VOYAGES
1 Richard Holmes, ‘Monsieur Nadar’, Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer, HarperCollins, London, 2000, pp.57–8
2 Jean Prinet and Antoinette Dilasser, Nadar, Collection Kiosque, Librairie Armand Colin, Paris, 1966, p.124
3 Holmes, ‘Monsieur Nadar’
4 Félix Nadar, Quand j’étais photographe, 1894, p.121
5 Ibid.; Prinet and Dilasser, pp.134–5
6 Nadar, Quand j’étais photographe, pp.113–14; see Stephan Bann, ‘Nadar’s Aerial View’, Seeing from Above; The Aerial View in Visual Culture, I.B. Tauris online publisher, 2012
7 Prinet and Dilasser, p.135
8 Nadar, Quand j’étais photographe, 1894, p.121
9 Prinet and Dilasser, p.140
10 Félix Nadar, Mémoires du Géant, 1864, pp.24–7
11 Prinet and Dilasser, pp.145, 142; cover of L’Aéronaute in La Part du rêve: De la Montgolfière au Satellite, Grand Palais exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1983, p.141
12 Nadar, from L’Aéronaute, 1863, quoted R.M. Ballantyne, Up in the Clouds, 1870
13 Prinet and Dilasser, p.150
14 Rolt, pp.145–50; L’Aéronaute, 1863, quoted in R.M. Ballantyne, Up in the Clouds, London, 1870
15 L’Aéronaute, 1863, quoted in Ballantyne
16 Prinet and Dilasser, p.150; Stephens, p.101; La Part du rêve p.141; Nadar, Mémoires du Géant
17 Prinet and Dilasser, p.150
18 Rolt, p.147
19 Nadar, Mémoires du Géant; see commentary by Stephen Bann
20 Nadar, Mémoires du Géant; Stephens, p.103
21 Nadar, Mémoires du Géant; Stephens, p.101
22 Prinet and Dilasser, p.154
23 Nadar, Mémoires du Géant, pp.352–84
24 Notre Dame de Paris, 1831; Prinet and Dilasser, pp.154, 163
25 Ibid., pp.155–61
26 Ibid., p.157
27 Ibid., p.158
28 Hugo quoted ibid.; see I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763–3749, OUP, 1993, p.3
29 Quoted Prinet and Dilasser, pp.157–8, translation Richard Holmes
30 Quoted ibid., p.158
31 Quoted ibid., p.160
32 Quoted ibid., pp.158–9
33 Quoted ibid., p.161
34 Quoted ibid., p.162
35 Fonvielle, in Travels in the Air, London, 1871, p.233
36 Ibid., pp.251–3
37 Prinet and Dilasser, p.161
38 Arthur B. Evans, Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific N
ovel, Greenwood Press, 1988, pp.18–20
39 Stephens, p.160
40 Arthur Evans, Jules Verne Rediscovered, p.20
41 See Arthur B. Evans, ‘The “New” Jules Verne’, Science-Fiction Studies, XXII: 1, No. 65, March 1995, pp.35–46
42 Arthur Evans, Jules Verne Rediscovered, p.21
43 Ibid., p.20
44 Jules Verne, Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1864; Wordsworth Classics, 2002, pp.166–7
45 Ibid., pp.172, 177
46 Ibid., pp.184, 185
47 Ibid., p.166
48 Ibid., p.188
49 Ibid., p.176
50 Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘A Defence of Ballooning’, in ‘Shelley at Oxford’, by T.J. Hogg, New Monthly Magazine, 1832; republished in Hogg’s unfinished Life of Shelley, 1858
51 Verne, Five Weeks in a Balloon, Wordsworth Classics, 2002, p.226
52 Ibid., p.207
53 Ibid., p.354
54 Ibid., p.213
55 Ibid., p.354
CHAPTER 8: VERTICAL EXPLORATIONS
1 Cornelius O’Dowd (sic) in Blackwood’s Magazine, October 1864; reprinted in Astra Castra, p.434
2 Rolt, pp.188–9
3 Glaisher, Travels in the Air, pp.27–8; Hodgson, p.21; Rolt, pp.188–9
4 Rolt, p.191
5 Fonvielle, in Travels in the Air, London, 1871, p.329. Many of Charles Green’s papers are now in the Cuthbert-Hodgson Collection, National Aerospace Library, Royal Aeronautical Society, Farnborough, Hampshire
6 Ibid., p.330
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., pp.330–1
9 Hodgson, p.268; Rolt, p.191
10 J.L. Hunt, ‘James Glaisher’, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 37, 1996; Rolt, p.192
11 Glaisher, Travels in the Air, pp.34–5; Rolt, Appendix, pp.248–50
12 Glaisher, Travels in the Air, p.42; Astra Castra, pp.228–9
13 Glaisher, Travels in the Air, p.22
14 Ibid.
15 Rolt, p.192
16 Tom Fort, Under the Weather, Arrow Books, 2007, pp.220–2
17 Rolt, pp.190, 192; J.L. Hunt, p.328
18 Glaisher, Travels in the Air, p.31
19 Ibid., pp.31, 33
20 Ibid., pp.38–40
21 Rolt, p.250
22 J.L. Hunt, p.327
23 Ibid.
24 Glaisher, Travels in the Air, p.43
25 Ibid., pp.44–7
26 Stan Yorke, Weather Forecasting Made Simple, 2010, p.46
27 See ibid., chapter ‘Old Tales’, pp.56–7
28 Edmund Halley’s weather chart is held by the National Meteorological Archive, Great Moor House, Exeter
29 Dove’s ‘Law of Storms’, 1858, described in John D. Cox, The Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction, 2003, p78