Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

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. “The descent was so rapid,” says one who witnessed it, “that the mean rate of the fall was not less than twenty yards a second. In less than a minute and a half the unfortunate aeronaut was thrown to the earth, and killed by the fall.” Madame Blanchard, thinking to improve upon Garnerin, who had decorated the balloon which ascended in celebration of the coronation of Napoleon I. with coloured lights, fixed fireworks instead to hers. A wire rope ten yards long was suspended to her car; at the bottom of this wire rope was suspended a broad disc of wood, around which the fireworks were ranged. These consisted of Bengal and coloured lights. On the 6th of July, 1819, there was a great fete at Tivoli, and a multitude had assembled around the balloon of Madame Blanchard. Cannon gave the signal of departure, and soon the fireworks began to show