Early balloon flight alarms Romsey residents (From Daily Echo)

Early balloon flight alarms Romsey residents

12:36pm Monday 18th January 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

AT first it was nothing more than a dot on the horizon but then the workers in the fields around Romsey became increasingly alarmed as a strange apparition grew bigger and bigger in the sky.

The date was October 16, 1784 and the unknown instilled fear in country folk and as the mysterious object loomed, ever larger, overhead the labourers took fright.

A “queer looking’’ contraption, painted in vivid colours and with a basket suspended on cords swaying beneath, eventually came floating to the ground in Lord Pamerston’s park It was not until a figure of a man was spotted inside the basket did it dawn on the onlookers that it must be one of those new-fangled balloons about which there had been so much talk in the Romsey inns lately.

The balloon came gently to earth and out stepped Jean Pierre Blanchard, the famous Frenchman who made some of the earliest ascents in the country.

This long forgotten incident back in the 18th century places Romsey firmly in the early annals of aeronautical history.

Blanchard’s flying visit to Romsey, which began after he took off from Chelsea in London, came only a month after Vincenzo Lunardi had made the first aerial voyage in England.

At the beginning of the flight, Blanchard was at first joined in the basket by a Dr Sheldon, a professor of anatomy, as passenger.

The ascent, which caused great public interest at Chelsea, nearly ended in disaster before it had properly begun. The take-off was described in a magazine of the day.

“The fields for a considerable distance round little Chelsea were crowded with horse and foot, in consequence of which a general devastation took place in the gardens, the produce being either trampled down or torn up. The turnips grown there were totally despoiled.

“At 12 o’clock M Blanchard and Dr Sheldon stepped into the boat pending from the balloon, and the cords being loosed, it took a diagonal direction across the garden, its altitude being about two feet off the ground, and then rose above the wall, but not high enough for the boat to clear it,’’ reported the magazine.

It appears Blanchard begged Sheldon to jump out in order to lighten the balloon. The professor declined so Blanchard threw all their food overboard instead.

This must have done the trick, for the balloon “ascended with an inclination to the south-west’’ and eventually reached Sunbury. Here the balloon came down and Sheldon “reluctantly quitted the car’’.

The magazine continued: “M Blanchard pursued his aerial voyage to Romsey where he descended at exactly half-past four in the afternoon.

“Still standing in his balloon, M Blanchard was carried through Lord Palmerston’s park into the middle of the market place amidst the acclamation of a great concourse of people, having seen, as they thought, an extraordinary kite flying in the air.’’ How great was the sensation created in Hampshire by Blanchard’s unorthodox visit to Romsey may be gauged from the fact that ballooning was still in its infancy.

Romsey’s first visitor by air later gained the distinction of being the first man to cross the Channel by air.

In addition to ballooning in France and the United States, Blanchard was also credited with the first balloon flights in Germany, Belgium, Poland, and the Netherlands.

In February 1808, Blanchard suffered a heart attack on a flight over The Hague in the Netherlands and fell more than 50 feet. He never recovered from the fall and died on March 7, 1809.