The great problem is at length solved. The air, as well as the earth and the ocean, has been subdued by science, and will become a common and convenient highway for mankind. The Atlantic has been actually crossed in a balloon! And this, too, without difficulty—without any great apparent danger—with thorough control of the machine—and in the inconceivably brief period of seventy-five hours from shore to shore!
By the energy of an agent at Charleston, South Carolina, we are enabled to be the first to furnish the public with a detailed account of this most extraordinary voyage, which was performed between Saturday, the 6th instant, at 11 A.M. and 2 P.M. on Tuesday, the 9th instant, by Sir Everard Bringhurst, Mr. Osborne, a nephew of Lord Bentinck; Mr. Monck Mason, and Mr. Robert Holland, the well-known aeronauts; Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, author of “Jack Sheppard,” et cetera, and Mr. Henson, the projector of the late unsuccessful flying-machine—with two seamen from Woolwich—in all, eight persons.
The particulars furnished below may be relied on as authentic and accurate in every respect, as with a slight exception they are copied verbatim from the joint diaries of Mr. Monck Mason and Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, to whose politeness our agent is indebted for much verbal information respecting the balloon itself, its construction, and other matters of interest. The only alteration in the MS. received has been made for the purpose of throwing the hurried account of our agent, Mr. Forsyth, into a connected and intelligible form.
The story that followed was about five thousand words in length. To summarize it, Monck Mason had applied the principle of the Archimedean screw to the propulsion of a dirigible balloon. The gas-bag was an ellipsoid thirteen feet long, with a car suspended from it. The screw propeller, which was attached to the car, was operated by a spring. A rudder shaped like a battledore kept the air-ship on its course.
The voyagers, according to the story, started from Mr. Osborne’s home near Penstruthal, in North Wales, intending to sail across the English Channel. The mechanism of the propeller broke, and the balloon, caught in a strong northeast wind, was carried across the Atlantic at the speed of sixty or more miles an hour. Mr. Mason kept a journal, to which, at the end of each day, Mr. Ainsworth added a postscript. The balloon landed safely on the coast of South Carolina, near Fort Moultrie.
The names of the supposed voyagers were well chosen by Poe to give verisimilitude to the hoax. Monck Mason and Robert Holland, or Hollond, were of the small party which actually sailed from Vauxhall Gardens, London, on the afternoon of November 7, 1836, in the balloon Nassau and landed at Weilburg, in Germany, five hundred miles away, eighteen hours later. Harrison Ainsworth, the novelist, was then one of the shining stars of English literary life. The others named by Poe were familiar figures of the period.
Poe adopted the plan, used so successfully by Locke in the moon hoax, of having real people do the thing that they would like to do; but there the resemblance of the two hoaxes ends, except for the technical bits that Poe was able to inject into his narrative. The moon hoax lasted for weeks; the balloon hoax for a day. Even the Sun did not attempt to bolster it, for it said the second day afterward:
BALLOON—The mails from the South last Saturday night not having brought confirmation of the balloon from England, the particulars of which from our correspondent we detailed in our extra, we are inclined to believe that the intelligence is erroneous. The description of the balloon and the voyage was written with a minuteness and scientific ability calculated to obtain credit everywhere, and was read with great pleasure and satisfaction. We by no means think such a project impossible.
About a week later, when the Sun was still being pounded by its contemporaries, a few of which had been gulled into rewriting the story, another editorial article on the hoax appeared:
BALLOON EXPRESS—We have been somewhat amused with the comments of the press upon the balloon express. The more intelligent editors saw its object at once. On the other hand, many of our esteemed contemporaries—those who are too ignorant to appreciate the pleasant satire—have ascribed to us the worst and basest motives. We expected as much.