From a Photograph.
Nearly every well-known principle of airship construction was violated. The proportions were impracticable, the craft being four hundred and eighty-five feet long and having a diameter of only thirty-four feet. The gas-bag was like a huge snake, having no rigidity, either horizontally or vertically, and not being stiffened by trussing of any adequate sort. A gas-bag of such length and proportionately small diameter should have been strengthened by a vertical framework, or by trusswork of rope or wire, so as to impart rigidity; but nothing of this sort was done. The motive-power was supplied by six separate four-cylinder forty-horse-power automobile engines, hung below the balloon at intervals.
THE AIRSHIP LEAVING THE GROUND AMID THE CHEERS OF THE EXCITED ONLOOKERS.
From a Photograph.
These concentrated weights were carried on a platform, not of planks, but of mattresses, laid down on mere canvas, supported by the netting which covered the gas-bag. Ropes placed round the gas-bag at the points where the engines were situated cut deeply into it, and no arrangements whatever were made to meet the special stresses caused by the steering of so long-drawn-out an affair. Loose’s chief reasons for refusing to make the ascent were that if the envelope were filled with enough gas to render it rigid the emergency valves would open, and if these were tightened the envelope was liable to burst.
Serious as the various defects mentioned were, the most fatal one was the fact that nothing had been done to prevent collapse or deformation caused by sudden expansion or contraction of the gas from changes of temperature. The balloon was one great, undivided bag, containing from four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand cubic feet of gas, but having no compartments or internal air-bags. Its lifting capacity was from eight to ten tons, so that it was much the largest airship ever built in America, even exceeding in dimensions the great “dirigible” of Count von Zeppelin.
It might be supposed that it would be pretty hard to get together a score of persons who would be willing to risk their lives in such an unpractical affair as the Morrell airship; but, strangely enough, the greatest difficulty was experienced in keeping people off the craft. One man, a well-known aeronaut named Captain Penfold, repeatedly begged Morrell to let him make the ascent, but his request was flatly refused. Yet so eager was Penfold that at the last minute he smuggled himself on to the craft and went up with it and—a few moments later—came down with it.
