2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Duncan Browne)
During his extraordinary career Charles Green made more than 500 hot air balloon flights - with eyecatching passengers including a live tiger, an in-voice opera singer and even a performing 10-piece band. A pioneering aeronaut who revolutionised air travel by introducing the use of coal gas instead of hydrogen, he also showed his fearless side by making his debut flight at the coronation of George IV. However, some of his most death-defying trips took place in none other than Lincolnshire , those hair-raising moments brought to life in a new book by Spalding author Alastair Goodrum.
One began in Boston in May 1828, and almost ended in a fatality over Gosberton. In blustery conditions, Green (1785-1870), who began life as a working class Londoner, decided to descend below the clouds but the grapnel from his tail rope smashed into trees and buildings - frightening a labourer at Mr Crosby’s granary - before holding in a nearby cornfield. However, as the basket lunged his passenger Mr Willerton, a wool buyer from Swineshead, was thrown overboard from his seat - amazingly saving himself from death by clinging onto the suspension ropes and dangling 150 feet above ground until the balloon came to a halt.
After deflating the balloon a passing coach came to their aid, Mr Everitt, the owner of Spalding’s White Hart Hotel, gave up his seat to allow the aeronaut to grab a lift to Gosberton House to enjoy the ‘gratifying hospitality’ of Rev John Calthrop. Despite that bumpy journey, Green wasn’t put off Boston, returning to the town for another crowd-thrilling flight - this time tethered to a pony. Death was also cheated during an 1825 flight from Stamford - although this time the unwitting victim wasn’t even due to be a passenger.
Setting off from the gas works yard off Wharf Road with ‘the mysterious and attractive Sophia Stocks’ the conditions were clear and cloudless. After passing over Burghley House, Ufford, Glinton and Peterborough the balloon began its descent the carriage landed in a field, with willing locals flocking to help hold onto the guide ropes. But deciding he didn’t want to damage the crop, Green warned the onlookers he was ascending again, a labourer named Bolton missing the call and finding himself carried into the air.
“He retained the presence of mind to hold his grip but fortuitously it required only a passage of about a mile before I was able to descend in to a grass field belonging to George Maxwell esq,” Green told the Stamford Mercury. “As the balloon sank gently towards the ground Mr Bolton judged his moment and dropped to earth from a height of 15 feet. “He was stunned only momentarily and this splendid fellow recovered quickly enough to follow me once more in order to render further assistance to secure my balloon.
” The Flying Adventures of Charles Green: The Extraordinary Airman who Revolutionised 19th Century Aeronautics - the first definitive biography of the Georgian and Victorian pioneer - has been a labour of love for Alastair that first began 30 years ago. With no log book, and many of Green’s writings believed to have been burnt by his third wife, he had to ‘rely on newspapers, from London to Limerick’ to piece together his subject’s flights, substantiating more than 350 of them. But all the while, the story of Green became all the more eye opening.
“There’s nothing he wouldn’t do. He took a tiger up, he had a two-tier basket. He was in the top one and the tiger and its owner was in the bottom one,” said Alastair, 81, who has released eight books on aeronatics after falling in love with plans during a childhood trip to Farnborough Air Show in 1954.
“He took up musicians, he could get a 10 piece band in there. He straddled a horse and went into the air. “He certainly wasn’t a mad man.
He developed a showman persona and was a businessman who made, by modern day standards, enormous sums of money and developed a taste for champagne.” Green’s legendary 500-plus flights saw him take more than 700 passengers who ‘paid handsomely’ for their journeys, one of the Johnson’s from Spalding’s Ayscoughfee Hall among them. But his most famous trip was a two-day epic from London to Weiburg in Germany.
He also took part in a number of balloon races and one of the many times he came close to meeting his maker was in one such instance. “There was illegal betting on this and someone at one venue cut the ropes that held his basket to the balloon with a razor so fine that when they went up it sprang,” Alastair added. “He had a passenger with him and they were very badly injured when they came down.
somebody had wanted him not to go far. “During his ballooning life he used more than his nine lives. At least 10 or 11, and got away with it - ranging from hard landings, broken bones, bruises and cuts to near drowning when he came down in the sea on one occasion.
“His opinions on aeronautics were also highly valued because he helped the major scientific bodies by taking their scientists into the air to carry out experiments., “Whenever he went he always took observations of height, temperature and that sort of thing and passed that to scientific bodies.” Since 1984, Alastair has written eight aviation history books - including School of Aces, which focuses on RAF Sutton Bridge ’s vital role during World War Two - and more than 100 articles; speaking publicly to clubs; societies and occasionally on radio.
And his latest book is soon to become a prize. The Balloon and Airship Club of Great Britain hand out the Charles Green Silver Salver - a gift to Green from a grateful Norfolk passenger - each year to the most worthy ballooning event in the world, the first being Sir Richard Branson’s Atlantic crossing. But this year a copy of the book will also be donated by the club to a deserving recipient.
The Flying Adventures of Charles Green (ISBN 9781036113308), published by Pen & Sword Books, is on sale priced £22..
