Читать книгу Falling Upwards - Richard Holmes - Страница 27

Two years after the publication of Aeronautica, in 1840, Green issued his own proposals to fly the Atlantic. He claimed to have identified a prevailing west-to-east wind current in the upper atmosphere, which meant that he would start the crossing from America. ‘Under whatever circumstances I made my ascent, however contrary the direction of the wind below, I uniformly found that at a certain elevation, varying occasionally but always within 10,000 feet of the earth, a current from west to east, or rather from the north of west, invariably prevailed.’

He also explained that a two-thousand-foot guide rope, fitted with canvas sea drags and copper floats, would be enough to stabilise an eighty-thousand-cubic-foot balloon and keep it airborne, without expending additional ballast, for ‘a period of three months’. He said he was only awaiting a generous sponsor to undertake the trans-Atlantic flight immediately.⁴⁰ In the end, the astute Green could find no financial backer, refused to depart without one, and the Atlantic attempt was never made.

But it was made in fiction. Green’s proposals inspired a further brilliant invention by Poe, published in the New York Sun in 1844. This time it was a news story hoax. ‘The Atlantic Balloon’ coolly presents an extraordinarily detailed and convincing account of Green and Monck Mason crossing the Atlantic from England in seventy-three hours. Much of the story is drawn from the well-publicised flight of the Royal Nassau. As the third member of the balloon crew, instead of Robert Hollond MP, Poe mischievously added his rival, the popular British thriller writer Harrison Ainsworth.

Poe’s story broke on Saturday, 13 April 1844, when the New York Sun announced that it would be issuing an ‘Extra’ containing a detailed account of a transatlantic crossing by a balloon, the ‘flying machine’ Victoria. There was also a postscript in the morning edition of the Sun, with an appropriate accumulation of exclamation marks: ‘By Express. Astounding intelligence by private express from Charleston via Norfolk! – The Atlantic Ocean crossed in three days!! – Arrival at Sullivan’s Island of a steering balloon invented by Mr Monck Mason!!!’

The Extra created an immediate sensation. According to Poe’s own account, a large crowd gathered in the square surrounding the New York Sun to wait for it, and when it appeared at two in the afternoon, it sold out immediately. The account consists of an introductory section and a journal kept by Monck Mason, to which Mr Ainsworth added a daily postscript. The introduction details the invention of the balloon by Mason (rather than Green), who adapted an Archimedean screw for the purpose of propelling a dirigible balloon through the air, inflated with more than forty thousand cubic feet of coal gas.

In contrast to the newspaper announcement, Poe’s own ‘reportage’ remains cool and apparently factual. The plain and straightforward narrative works on several levels. First, it genuinely explores the technical, scientific challenge of crossing the Atlantic, which was already beginning to obsess American aeronauts like John Wise. Next, it quietly touches on a vein of social satire, a mockery of scientific presumption and hubris which would become characteristic of the later science fiction genre. Finally, as with so many of Poe’s stories, it is a psychological study, an exploration of collective delusion, a group ‘suspension of disbelief’. Here Coleridge’s famous term takes on a new, strangely literal meaning.⁴¹ The desire to be dazzled by scientific wonders may be associated with a conscious willingness to be bamboozled or hoaxed.

Needless to say, it is also a brilliant exploitation of the growing newspaper tradition of the ‘scoop’ – and the fake scoop. American editors were shrewdly realising that their readers did not mind occasionally being taken for a ride, especially such an airborne one. This fruitful connection between balloons and newspapers was ready to expand.