Falling Upwards

  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