Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air. Richard Holmes

      Three months later, on 4 July 2008, an oil-rig support vessel found the remains of his body (lower torso and legs only) floating about sixty miles off the Brazilian coast, still attached to his buoyancy chair. It seems that part of the helium balloon rig must have separated or failed in some way during the first twenty-four hours of his flight. Possibly some of the balloons began bursting at high altitude, but this of course would have automatically reduced his lift, much as planned, and brought him back comparatively gently to earth. Except that now there was no earth beneath him. It seems that Padre Baloneiro must have spent some time meditating in the sea. Finally, he was probably eaten by sharks. But he was a brave man, a daring balloonist, and possibly even a saint.^fn1

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      The dash and eccentricity of so many of those who have flown balloons since the first Montgolfiers of 1783 is strangely mesmerising. I find it difficult not to admire such figures as Sophie Blanchard, Charles Green, Félix Nadar, James Glaisher, Thaddeus Lowe, Gaston Tissandier or Salomon Andrée. Indeed, I find it difficult not to fall for them. The word ‘intrepid’ is automatically used of balloonists; but almost always thoughtlessly. In my experience, balloonists come in every shape and personality type: meticulous, cautious, reckless, obsessive, sportive, saturnine, or devil-may-care. Equally they seem to have every kind of motivation: professional, commercial, scientific, philanthropic, escapist, aesthetic, or just plain publicity-seeking.

      But the one thing they never quite seem to be is down-to-earth. All of them seem to have one enigmatic thing in common, besides physical courage and a head for heights. This is a romantic dream of flying, a strange – an almost unnatural – longing to be airborne. There is something both exotic and magnetic about such people. A biographer is drawn to their enigma.

      The balloons themselves are mysterious, paradoxical objects. They are both beautiful and ephemeral. They are a mixture of power and fragility in constant flux. They offer a provoking combination of tranquillity and peril; of control and helplessness; of technology and terror. They make demands.

      Consider an earlier balloon flight for charity, which took place on the afternoon of 22 July 1785, when a full-size hydrogen balloon was seen flying at three thousand feet over the Norfolk fishing village of Lowestoft. (Indeed, very close to my village fête.) The balloon was heading rapidly eastwards, directly out over the North Sea, and its pilot was clearly unable to bring it back to earth. There was nothing between the balloon and the distant shores of the Baltic.

      The man in the basket was thirty-three-year-old John Money, a half-pay officer from the 15th Light Dragoons. Major Money had taken off earlier that afternoon from Ranelagh Gardens in Norwich, to raise cash for the new Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, founded in 1772. It was a cause supported by the Bishop of Norwich and the local Norwich MP, William Wyndham, a friend of Dr Johnson’s and also a balloon enthusiast. The Major knew a lot about horses, harness, and driving a coach and pair, but he had little practical experience of balloons. He was however a man of courage and resource, who enjoyed a gamble as well as supporting a good cause.

      Money had originally joined the Norfolk Militia, then the 15th Light Dragoons, and subsequently went out to serve as a captain under General John Burgoyne for the British Crown in the American War of Independence. He was noted for his unfashionable objection to military flogging for desertion (often a lethal punishment), mildly suggesting that a neat tattooed ‘D’ on the upper right arm might prove more effective. He was captured in Canada after the Battle of Saratoga, but eventually bargained his way out of prison. It seems he was a cool customer in a tight situation.

      He was now back home, riding his horses and kicking his heels on his small country estate at Crown Point, in the village of Trowse Newton, just south of Norwich. Balloons fascinated him, partly for their military possibilities, but also for their sheer if uncontrollable beauty. He regarded them as if they were a species of wild horse. Admittedly, he had only made one previous ascent, in London that spring, in what was known as the ‘British Balloon’. This had been constructed as a patriotic rival to the already celebrated Italian balloons of Vincenzo Lunardi and the wealthy eccentric Count Zambeccari. Characteristically, Money had somehow convinced the owners of the British balloon to let him transport it to Norwich, and to fly it solo for this philanthropic ascent.²

      The launch went fine, according to the local Gazette, attended by ‘a large and brilliant assembly of the first and most distinguished personages in the city and county’.³ The balloon rose easily above the stately copper beeches on the northern boundary of the gardens (their leaves barely stirring), and was then carried on a gentle summer breeze across the river Yare, in a north-westwards direction towards distant Lincolnshire. But as it gained height, an ‘improper current’ arose, and a brisk wind blew it back across the city – to more enthusiastic cheers – and then south-eastwards, still gaining height, towards the Norfolk coast, a mere fifteen miles away. By 6 p.m. the balloon was spotted sailing high over Lowestoft, and heading out over the North Sea. It was supposed that some problem had arisen with the valve of his balloon, and that Money was unable to vent sufficient hydrogen gas to bring himself down. He disappeared rapidly out over the sea and into the softening eastern haze of the summer evening.

      Among the ‘distinguished assembly’ who witnessed the launch at Ranelagh Gardens was the Earl of Orford. He wrote anxiously to William Wyndham the following morning. ‘I am sorry to inform you that a Major Money ascended alone under the British Balloon at 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon. The balloon rose to a great height and took a direction towards the sea. It was seen entering over the ocean about a league south of Lowestoft at a very great height at six o’clock. By which circumstance I am greatly apprehensive for his thus continuing in the air, but that by some accident perhaps the String which connects to the valve was broken …’⁴

      Orford’s notion of a balloon controlled by a ‘string’ was a little simplistic; but he noted accurately that although the balloon ‘was not half full’, and that its lower part appeared to have suffered what he called ‘a collapsion’, it continued unchecked towards the horizon. Indeed, Money was struggling to rein in his balloon as if it were a runaway horse, but without success. It was only an hour later, when he was well out of sight of land, that the cooling night air finally deposited his balloon twenty miles off the Norfolk coast, in an area known on mariners’ charts as Long Sand, notorious for its shoals and shipwrecks.^fn2 The balloon still had sufficient hydrogen to keep its basket partially above the waves. Waist-deep in water, Money began a long battle to remain afloat in a choppy sea as darkness fell.

      He soon abandoned his basket, cutting it loose and allowing it to sink beneath him, while climbing up into the balloon hoop and clinging onto the rigging. By skilfully playing the lines, he managed to hold sufficient gas in the balloon canopy to keep it partially inflated, pulling him slowly through water almost like a kite, and giving him just enough buoyancy to stay afloat. Increasingly cold and exhausted, Money hung on grimly hour after hour as the balloon steadily dragged him further and further out to sea through the darkness. As the gas slowly escaped, he sank gradually deeper into the water, until after four hours he was up to his chest, and almost incoherent with hypothermia.

      Several pleasure boats and fishing smacks had in fact set out after him, both from Yarmouth and further south from Southwold. Their crews were in sportive mood, playfully competing to find the airborne quarry. But as darkness fell they grew dispirited and bored, eventually giving up any hope of recovering him. One by one they turned to beat back into port, telling each other that he was either drowned or in Holland, which came to much the same thing. Agonisingly, it appears that Money had seen several of these ships. Their sails were clearly silhouetted on the western horizon behind him, dark against the dying summer light. But they were too far away, and he was now too weak even to shout. The water was colder, and the waves came up from his chest to his chin.

      But one determined coastguard cutter, the Argus,