Preparations were at once commenced. The passengers were limited to three—Mr. Green, who was to manage the balloon, Mr. Hollond, and his friend Mr. Monck Mason. A ton of ballast was to be carried, provisions for a whole fortnight were laid in, and, since none could tell to within a thousand miles or more where they might be drifted, passports to every kingdom in Europe were obtained.
They left London late one November day, and, rising under a north-west wind, skirted the north of Kent. Passing presently over Canterbury, they wrote a courteous message to the mayor, and dropped it in a parachute. Some time later, when the short autumn twilight was beginning to wane, they saw beneath them the gleam of white waves, and knew they had reached the boundary of the hitherto much-dreaded sea. Immediately afterwards they entered a heavy sea fog, which hid all things from their sight, and darkness and dead silence reigned around.
The Voyage Across the Channel.
This lasted for fifty minutes, when they emerged from the cloud and found the bright lights of Calais beneath them. It was then quite dark, and they sped on through the night over unknown towns and villages whose lights gleamed fainter and fewer as the time went on. Then once again they entered the fog-bank, and for long hours no sign or sound of earth reached them more.
As the night wore on they suddenly had a startling and alarming experience. Their balloon, which had been flying near the earth, was presently lightened by the discharge of ballast, and rose to a height of 12,000 feet into the air. Immediately afterwards, when all around was wrapped in the deepest silence and the blackest darkness, there came the sound of a sharp explosion from over their heads, followed by a rustling of the silk, and immediately the car received a violent jerk. The same thing was repeated again and yet again, and it is small wonder that the awful conviction then seized the party that there, in the darkness, in the dead of night, at that fearful height, their balloon had burst, and they were falling headlong to the ground. Great indeed must have been their relief when they found this was not the case, and discovered the real reason of their alarm.
It is the tendency of a balloon when flying near the ground to assume an elongated or pear shape; and while their balloon was in this position the netting, which was wet with dew, had frozen hard and tight around it. Immediately they rose to great heights the gas had expanded, and the balloon had become globular in shape, with a result that the stiffened ropes sprang to their new position with the crack and jerk which had so startled the party. When day broke next morning they found themselves over long tracts of desolate forest land, and fearing they were approaching the wild, inhospitable steppes of Russia, they descended with all speed, and discovered they were in the Duchy of Nassau, in Germany, near Weilburg, where they were received with the wildest enthusiasm and delight. From start to finish they had accomplished a voyage of 500 miles in eighteen hours.
After this event Green made many other voyages in the great Nassau balloon, and met with many exciting adventures. On one occasion, ascending in a violent gale of wind, he and a passenger covered twenty miles in a quarter of an hour, and, on descending near Rainham, in Essex, were blown along across the fields at a furious pace, until the anchor caught, and brought them up with such a wrench that it broke the ring and jerked the car completely upside down. Green and his friend only escaped from being thrown out by holding on to the ropes, and they were afterwards dragged wildly through fences and hedges until the balloon collapsed and came to a stand, though not before they had both been severely hurt.
On another voyage the famous balloon met with serious injury, for having been some time above the clouds, during an ascent, Green found himself carried out to sea, and was obliged to come down in the water two miles north of Sheerness. As in the accident which befell Mr. Sadler in his attempt to cross the Irish Channel, the wind caught the silk and bore it along across the water too rapidly for a pursuing vessel to overtake it. Green then lowered his anchor, which by happy chance soon became entangled in a sunken wreck, and so brought the balloon up. A boat immediately put out to his assistance, and he and a companion were speedily rescued; but the balloon was so restive in the wind that it was dangerous to approach it. Green himself then suggested that a volley of musketry should be fired into the silk to expel the gas, and this was accordingly done and the balloon secured, though it afterwards took Green a fortnight’s hard labour to repair the damage done to the fabric.
But the saddest event connected with the Nassau balloon was the fatal accident which befell Mr. Cocking in 1837, the year after the great Nassau voyage. Before relating this, however, it will be necessary to refer briefly to the history of a most important accessory of the balloon, hitherto unmentioned—the parachute.