The Age of Wonder (28 page)

Jeffries drew up a memorandum for the Royal Society, stating the main scientific objectives of the ascents, to be achieved by ‘a variety of experiments’ and ‘not for mere amusement’. He was quite precise: ‘Four points need to be more clearly determined. First, the power of ascending or descending at pleasure, while suspended or floating in the air. Secondly, the effect which oars or wings might be made to produce towards this purpose, and in directing the course of the Balloon. Thirdly, the state and temperature of the atmosphere at different heights above the earth. And fourthly, by observing the varying course of the currents of air, or winds, at certain elevations, to throw some new light on the theory of winds in general.’‘
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On this trip Jeffries made the first truly scientific record of a balloon ascent, recording a mass of data-height, direction, air temperature, electrical charges, appearance of clouds, horizon line-at regular time intervals, and taking atmospheric samples for Cavendish. One of the details which emerged was a ‘profile’ of the characteristic flight path of a hydrogen balloon: not a single smooth parabola, as had been supposed, but a series of looping ascents and descents as the balloon moved above and below its ‘equilibrium point’.

Jeffries also gave the first truly vivid account of the changing appearance of the ground as seen ‘from a bird’s eye view, as it is called’. This too was constantly surprising. As they took off, there was the white sea of upturned faces in the city squares, swiftly reduced to tiny, unrecognisable points. There was the unearthly silence, the sense of their own motion-lessness as the earth seemed to revolve below the basket. Though they did not appear to move, their compass needle steadily turned. Below them, the earth appeared transformed. There was the strange flattening out of hills and buildings, the emergence of previously unsuspected patterns in the foliage of woods, or the cultivation marks in fields, or the branching streets of a town. There was the constantly delusive appearance of clouds, and sudden showers of rain or even snowflakes. (No electrical charges were recorded, much to Jeffries’ relief.) The whole world became ‘like a beautifully coloured map or carpet’.
⁵⁸

After this flight, Jeffries agreed to finance Blanchard in an attempt to fly from Dover to France, for the enormous sum of £700.

9

Crossing the English Channel-or for the French,
La Manche
-was an obvious objective for early balloonists. It would be a trial both of balloon technology and of aeronautical nerve. It also carried the distinct under-current of an arms race: which nation could command the new element of the air in the event of an invasion? The challenge quickly became an informal national competition, with attempts from both British and French sides of the water. It was seen simultaneously as a scientific, a diplomatic and a sporting battle.

Three main contenders emerged in the autumn of 1784, in the shape of very different and informal teams. They were lead by Jean-Pierre Blanchard (Dover), Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (Boulogne) and James Sadler (Oxford). Each was struggling to get financial backing for a suitable balloon. Sadler’s balloon never got off the ground. It was destroyed in transit on a Thames barge from Oxford, when a rainstorm soaked the canopy and caused the folds of rubberised silk to stick together.

Pilâtre, who had completed two further epic Montgolfier ascents, was clearly the favourite. He had a large loan of 40,000 crowns from the French Court and the Académie des Sciences, and a big new balloon which aimed to combine the hot-air and the hydrogen principles: a Charlier mounted on a Montgolfier. He was established in Boulogne by November 1784, having built a special hangar for his equipment on the promontory. But he was held up by contrary winds from the north-east, and made up for lost time by making the conquest of a beautiful local convent girl, Susan Dyer, who happened to be English. Romantic trysts alternated with the launching of small test balloons and attempts at weather forecasting, as Pilâtre sat it out with increasing impatience. Rats began to eat the balloon canopy, and his creditors gnawed at his funds.

Meanwhile, Blanchard and Jeffries could not get down to Dover before January 1785, and when they set up in Dover Castle Blanchard quarrelled violently with his American backer. He announced that it would be a solo attempt, and tried to dismiss Jeffries from the entire project. The subsequent arguments, in which the Governor of Dover Castle was forced to intervene on Jeffries’ side, delayed the launch by several days.

At the last moment Blanchard tried to hoodwink Jeffries by constructing a lead-weighted belt which he intended to wear beneath his coat, and then announce that the balloon’s lift appeared to be too weak to carry two people. Jeffries, an observant man with a cool scientific temperament, spotted the ruse and calmly asked Blanchard to dispense with his personal ballast. But the concept must have stuck in Jeffries’ mind, for it would later save both their lives. Blanchard, in return, absolutely refused to take any of Jeffries’ scientific instruments on board, except for a barometer and a mariner’s compass. What they did agree to take were cork jackets, in case of a forced landing in the sea. They also carried bags of publicity pamphlets, thirty pounds of sand ballast, and Blanchard’s patent aerial oars and
moulinet.
Jeffries wore an expensive beaver flying hat to keep out the cold, and fine chamois leather gloves to improve his grip.

Finally, on 7 January 1785, at one o’clock in the afternoon, Blanchard and Jeffries lifted off from the top of Dover cliff to attempt the first ever Channel crossing. Jeffries’
Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages with M. Blanchard
describes the perilous two-hour flight which followed, interspersed with moments of intense comic rivalry between the two men. Quite early on, each accidentally managed to drop the other’s national flag over the side of the basket, and then profusely apologised. Having cleared Dover and its cheering crowds in fine style, the balloon promptly began an easterly drift up-Channel towards the Goodwin Sands. They were soon staring down grimly at its ‘formidable breakers’.

The balloon then swung back, and picking up a gentle southerly airstream began to drift towards Calais, but steadily lost height over the sea. By two-thirds of the way across they had progressively jettisoned all the sand ballast, all their food, and most of their technical equipment, except the precious barometer and one bottle of brandy. But the balloon continued to drop, until it was well below the level of the approaching cliffs of the Pas de Calais. They now began to perform a kind of aerial striptease, as Jeffries recorded in his flight diary. ‘When two-thirds from the French coast we were again falling rapidly towards the sea, on which occasion my
noble little captain
gave orders, and set the example, by beginning to strip our aerial car, first of our silk and finery: this not giving us sufficient release, we cast one wing, then the other; after which I was obliged to unscrew and cast away our moulinet; yet still approaching the sea very fast, and the boats being much alarmed for us, we cast away, first one anchor, then the other, after which my
little hero
stripped and threw away his coat (great one). On this I was compelled to follow his example. He next cast away his trowsers. We put on our cork jackets and were, God knows how, as merry as grigs to think how we should splatter in the water. We had a fixed cord, &c to mount into our upper story; and I believe both of us, as though inspired, felt ourselves confident of success in the event.’

With nothing remaining as ballast except the bottle of brandy, they were left standing in their underclothes, wearing only their cork jackets. But this made the crucial difference. Less than 120 yards above the sea, the balloon steadied and then began to rise again. As they caught the onshore wind, their ascent turned into a great triumphant arc, taking them high over the cliffs of Calais and twelve miles inland. Blanchard now revealed that he had concealed a small sack of publicity letters, and these were thrown out, to become the first ever airmail delivery. Jeffries calmly noted how the stream of fluttering paper seemed to race across the fields far below them, and took ‘exactly five minutes in reaching the surface of the earth’.
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Once clear of the coastal updraught, the balloon began an even faster final descent towards the heavily wooded region of Guines forest. A violent and possibly fatal crash-landing in the trees seemed imminent and inevitable. Jeffries, however, maintained a detached, scientific assessment of the situation. He pointed out to Blanchard that there was still one last way of throwing out personal ballast: ‘it was contained within ourselves’. Seizing the leather bladders hung in the balloon’s rigging as flotation devices, they carefully urinated into them, and threw the contents over the side. In his
Narrative
Jeffries apologised for introducing this ‘trivial and ludicrous detail’, but pointed out that it was precisely the sort of information that a scientific writer should record.
^♣

At all events, this ‘evacuation’ sufficiently checked the rate of their descent, so that the gondola bounced roughly across the tops of the trees instead of plunging violently through the canopy. Jeffries, who was still wearing his chamois leather flying gloves, was able to seize on passing branches until the balloon’s progress was gradually halted. It took twenty-eight minutes to release enough hydrogen for the balloon to become manageable. Together Jeffries and Blanchard then carefully hand-manoeuvred the gondola down through a gap between two trees, until at last it safely reached
terra firma,
with the balloon canopy hanging in the branches overhead, gently deflating. They had achieved a first historic crossing.

Jeffries says they staggered around the wreckage of the gondola for several minutes, too stunned and shaking with cold even to congratulate each other. But soon they were surrounded by a crowd of well-wishers, many of whom had followed their course on horseback (like a new form of fox-hunting), and carried them off in triumph to Calais. There is a monument where they touched down, and their balloon car was preserved in the Calais museum until 1966. The local
auberge
owner also put up his own quaint but oddly moving sign to commemorate the great crossing.
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Later they were rapturously received in Paris, presented to the King, applauded by the Académie des Sciences, and received a standing ovation at the Opéra. They were personally congratulated by Pilâtre (a particularly generous gesture), and asked to give a lecture at his science museum in the rue Saint-Honoré. At one glittering reception, several young ladies rushed up to the aeronauts and crowned them with bay leaves. In between the celebrations, Jeffries spent several quiet evenings with Benjamin Franklin at Passy discussing the future of flight, and the beauty and intelligence of French women.

The English Ambassador, the Duke of Dorset, promised Jeffries that he would be made a Fellow of the Royal Society (’free of all expenses’) on his return to London. Jeffries noted in his journal: ‘The Duke told me that he was well pleased that I did not suffer the Frenchman to pass over alone.’
⁶¹
Despite all the lionising, Jeffries had sent a summary report of the flight to Banks within a week, in a letter dated 13 January 1785. He regretted that it could not yet be sent by aerial post. His report emphasised their remarkable good luck in getting across at all, and made it clear that Blanchard had by no means solved the central problem of navigating a balloon.

The subsequent careers of the two aeronauts were very different. Jean-Pierre Blanchard was awarded a royal pension, and the freedom of the city of Paris. He went on to make sixty-three flights in total, and became the most famous French aeronaut of the first generation. But many of his accounts are unscientific, almost resembling Baron Munchausen-like mixtures of fact and fiction. He founded a Balloon Academy on the Stockwell Road in Vauxhall, and provided balloon entertainments, flying violinists, female aerial acrobats and parachuting animals. Angry crowds eventually wrecked his equipment, and he departed on a global exhibition tour, making ascents in Germany, Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia and America.

John Jeffries wrote a longer official report to Joseph Banks at the Royal Society, which was published in the Society’s
Transactions
in 1786. He never flew again, and his private diary records several exclamations of ‘thank God’ that he survived. It also includes an almost mystical experience of ‘awful stillness and silence’ that may be similar to Dr Charles’s.
⁶²
He received no honours (except being made ‘Baron of the Cinque Ports’), no prize, no pension and no Copley Medal from the Royal Society, but he was at least elected a Fellow. Two months after the flight he revisited Dover in sober and thoughtful mood. ‘At noon visited the cliff and spot of our departure on our late aerial voyage into France. The recollection of it was awfully grand and majestick, and my heart filled, I hope, with sincere and grateful acknowledgments to the kind protections of that day. Oh, Gracious Father, may I be influenced by it as I ought, through my life!’
⁶³

10

This dramatic crossing was soon followed by ghastly tragedy, when the unflappable Pilâtre de Rozier attempted to fly across the Channel in the opposite direction, from Boulogne to Dover, on 15 June 1785. His intention was to recover ‘the glory of France’, and also perhaps to prove that England could be invaded from the air.

His huge aerostat was not a single balloon but two harnessed together, one on top of the other. The idea was to combine the stable lifting power of the hydrogen balloon (on the top), with the more dynamic and controllable power of the hot-air balloon (below). In appearance this multiple aerostat was oddly menacing, like a warlike mace or club with a short handle. The handle was formed by a thin, tubular-shaped Montgolfier, and the head by a fat, spherical Charlier. Pilâtre and his new co-pilot Pierre Romain stood beneath this contraption in a circular gallery, feeding fuel into an open brazier that could be lowered or jettisoned for landing or in emergencies. The brazier would of course emit a constant stream of sparks.