According to this narrative, there was no conflagration of the gas in the middle of the atmosphere, nor is it stated precisely whether the grating of the Montgolfiere was lighted.
Maisonfort ran to the spot when the travellers fell, found them covered with the cloth of the balloon, and occupying the same positions which they had taken up on departing.
By a sad chance, that seems like irony, they were thrown down only a few paces from the monument which marks the spot where Blanchard descended. At the present day Frenchmen going to England via Calais do not fail to visit at the forest of Guines the monument consecrated to the expedition of Blanchard. A few paces from this monument the cicerone will point out with his finger the spot where his rivals expired.
“Such was the end of the first of aeronauts, and the most courageous of men,” says a contemporaneous historian. “He died a martyr to honour and to zeal. His kindness, amiability, and modesty endeared him to all who knew him. She who was dearest to him—a young English lady, who boarded at a convent at Boulogne, and whom he had first met only a few days prior to his last ascent—could not support the news of his death. Horrible convulsions seized her and she expired, it is said, eight days after the dreadful catastrophe. Roziers died at the age of twenty-eight and a half years.”
Olivari perished at Orleans on the 25th of November, 1802. He had ascended in a Montgolfiere made of paper, strengthened only by some bands of cloth. His car, made of osiers, and loaded with combustible matter, was suspended below the grating; and when at a great elevation it became the prey of the flames. The aeronaut, thus deprived of his support, fell, at the distance of a league from the spot from which he had risen.
Mosment made his last ascent at Lille on the 7th of April, 1806. His balloon was made of silk, and was filled with hydrogen gas. Ten minutes after his departure he threw into the air a parachute with which he had provided himself. It is supposed that the oscillations consequent on the throwing off of the parachute were the cause of they aeronaut’s fall. Some pretend that Mosment had foretold his death, and that it was caused by a willful carelessness. However this may be, the balloon continued its flight alone, and the body of the aeronaut was found partly buried in the sand of the fosse which surrounds the town.
Bittorff made a great many successful ascents. He never used any machine but the Montgolfiere. At Manheim, on the 17th of July, the day of his death his balloon, which was of paper, sixteen metres in diameter, and twenty in height, took fire in the air, and the aeronaut was thrown down upon the town. His fall was mortal.
Harris, an old officer of the English navy, together with another English aeronaut, named Graham, had made a great many ascents. He conceived the idea of constructing a balloon upon an original plan; but his alterations do not seem to have been improvements. In May, 1824, he attempted an ascent from London, which had much apparent success, but which terminated fatally. When at a great elevation, it seems, the aeronaut, wishing to descend, opened the valve. It had not been well constructed, and after being opened it would not close again. The consequent loss of gas brought the balloon down with great force. Harris lost his life with the fall; but the young lady who had accompanied him received only a trifling wound.
Sadler, a celebrated English aeronaut, who, in one of his many experiments, had crossed the Irish Channel between Dublin and Holyhead, lost his life miserably near Bolton, on the 28th of September, 1824. Deprived of his ballast, in consequence of his long sojourn in the air, and forced at last to descend, at a late hour, upon a number of high buildings, the wind drove him violently against a chimney. The force of the shock threw him out of his car, and he fell to the earth and died. His prudence and knowledge were unquestionable, and his death is to be ascribed alone to accident. It was an aerial shipwreck.
Cocking had gone up twice in Mr. Green’s balloon as a simple amateur. He took it into his head to go up a third time. He wished to attempt a descent in a parachute of his own construction, which he believed was vastly superior to the ordinary one. He altered the form altogether, though that form had been proved to be satisfactory. In place of a concave surface, supporting itself on a volume of air, Cocking used an inverted cone, of an elaborate construction, which, instead of supporting him in the air, only accelerated his fall. Unhappily, Green participated in this experiment. The two made an ascent from Vauxhall, on the 27th of September, 1836, Green having suspended Cocking’s wretched contrivance from the car of his balloon. Cocking held on by a rope, and at the height of from 1,000 to 1,200 feet the amateur, with his patent parachute, were thrown off from the balloon. A moment afterwards Green was soaring away safely in his machine, but Cocking was launched into eternity.