by Guy Warner
Despite extensive search operations by naval and commercial ships from England, France and the Channel Islands, Powell and the balloon were never seen again. No doubt George Usborne, in common with other educated and technically-minded citizens in Queenstown, would have kept abreast of these developments as reported in the English and Irish press.
Early Life in Queenstown
In 1880, George was appointed to the Queenstown Coastguard and served there for three years. Then, in December 1883, he joined Cork Harbour Board as Deputy Harbour Master, becoming Pilot Master in 1893 and eventually Harbour Master in 1922. He was Honorary Secretary of the lifeboat management committee for forty years. The May 1920 Lifeboat Journal reported that on:
‘20 April 1920, Admiral Sir Reginald Tupper, KCB, Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches, presented to Captain Usborne the Thanks of the Committee Management inscribed on Vellum, and the Silver Inkstand which had been awarded to him for his services during thirty-six years as Honorary Secretary of the Queenstown Station, which has now been closed.’
He retired from his position as harbour master in May 1925 owing to ill health and died two months later. His obituaries in the Irish press praised his long career of public service and noted that he had carried out his work with the Irish Times to his usual high standard, commenting favourably upon his, ‘utmost zeal and efficiency’, and the Cork Examiner recording that he was, ‘a very upright and kindly gentleman, who made innumerable friends amongst those who had the pleasure of his cultured and refined acquaintance’. George Usborne was very proud of his years of service in what he regarded as the safest harbour in the United Kingdom at all times. He recalled that he had seen the largest ocean steamers of nearly every line flying the British flag enter and leave the harbour at all stages of the tide, in all weathers, both day and night, and had never known a casualty occur, except through carelessness or some grave error of judgement.
The Cork Harbour Board meets on 10 October 1917, Captain George Usborne is seated in the centre of the photograph, in uniform. (Port of Cork)
John Gilbert, Patrick’s Quay, Cork, 1886. Watercolour on paper 21 x 31cm. Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.
Rear Admiral C.V. Usborne.
Neville had two older brothers. Philip Osbert Gordon was born on 27 February 1879, in Folkestone. He was a Royal Engineer and later Director of Public Works in Uganda. He died in 1915 in Calcutta. Then there was Cecil Vivian, born on 17 May 1880, in Queenstown, who preceded Neville into the Royal Navy. He specialised in gunnery, and later in mine warfare, inventing the apparatus which led to the introduction of Paravane mine protection. During the Dardanelles campaign he took a flight to inspect the minefield laid in the narrow waters and was shot down by an over-enthusiastic British gunner – luckily without injury. He was promoted to captain in 1917; he was senior British officer at Salonika and later commanded the Naval Brigade on the Danube. He held a succession of staff appointments and important commands, including the battleships Malaya and Resolution after the war, and rose to the rank of vice admiral before he retired in 1933. He was recalled for service in World War Two and retired once more in 1945. Cecil died in January 1951. His obituary in The Times prompted a letter from a former companion in arms, who wrote as GOS and who praised the elder Usborne’s drive, persuasive manner, energy, ingenuity, sympathy and good administration.31
In the 1880s and 1890s, during the period when Neville and his brothers were growing up, Queenstown was prospering as never before or since. It was the terminus for the main railway line from Dublin. The transatlantic liners called, going and coming to deliver and pick up passengers and mail, and the harbour was full of sailing ships inward bound from China, India, Australia and New Zealand. Life for the professional classes in Queenstown in the 1880s and 1890s was more leisured and pleasant than at any time since. The children of such families were always privately educated. The Usborne family lived at Dunlea, and later at Carndonagh. Neville’s niece, Vivian Mary, later recalled:
‘I remember the sirens of the huge liners hooting as they left port, when, aged three or four, I went to stay in the house on the hill overlooking the harbour.’32
The Esplanade, Cobh, formerly Queenstown. (via Allen Crosbie)
The Cork Opera House was flourishing, and provided both light (Gilbert and Sullivan) and classical operas, and symphony orchestras came there for a season. Queenstown had its own Musical Hall. There was a pack of beagles on the island and major hunts on the mainland, and a lot of good shooting on the marshland round about. Only the wealthy would have possessed guns. Queenstown accommodated Cork businessmen, the families of the officers on the Royal Naval ships and the dockyard, and most of the families of the army officers stationed on Spike Island. The Admiral was the most important local dignitary.33
Developments in Naval Technology
The second half of the nineteenth century was also a time of great technological change with regard to warships, though technological progress was by no means welcomed by all. The great engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, complained of the Admiralty’s attitude to innovation during the Crimean War in the following terms:
‘They have an extraordinary supply of cold water and capacious and heavy extinguishers…. But they have an unlimited supply of some negative principle which seems to absorb and eliminate everything that approaches them…. It is a curious and puzzling phenomenon, but in my experience it has always attended every contact with the Admiralty.’34
Steam propulsion in line-of-battle ships of the Royal Navy was introduced with HMS Sans Pareil in 1851 and the ninety-one gun HMS Agamemnon the following year (the first to be designed and built from the keel up with installed steam power). In 1860, HMS Warrior was launched, the first major warship to be built entirely of iron, which was followed by HMS Royal Sovereign in 1864, the first turret-armed battleship and the only one with a wooden hull. The Whitehead torpedo, which was invented in 1867, came to be regarded as a very great threat to the world’s navies, particularly after the development of small, fast, torpedo boats, which could potentially sink a more ponderous battleship; the first of these in RN service was HMS Lightning in 1877.
HMS Devastation.
In 1871, HMS Devastation created something of a sensation; it had no sails and relied solely on its 800 hp engine for propulsion; it had turrets fore and aft for a pair of muzzle-loading, rifled, 12-inch guns, which could train through 280 degrees – the main armament therefore being on top of the hull rather than within. The sailors were less than pleased with their accommodation, however, as when asked by a journalist what it was like below decks, the reply came that it was like living in, ‘rat holes with tinned air.’35 It is to be hoped that this was improved by the introduction of the first RN ironclad with electric lighting, HMS Inflexible of 1881.
Further Progress in the Air
While Neville was a babe in arms, a series of significant events in respect of lighter-than-air aviation took place in France. Firstly, in 1883–84, the Tissandier brothers, Gaston (1839–1906) and Albert (1843–1899), designed, built and flew the first dirigible powered by electricity. The envelope had a capacity of 37,400 cubic feet (1058 cubic metres) and was 92 feet (28 metres) long, with a maximum diameter of 30 feet (9.10 metres). The basket was fitted with a propeller and a small electric motor of less than 2 hp (1.48 kW) powered by a zinc-carbon battery. It made its first ascent from Auteuil, with the inventors on board, on 8 October 1883 and flew for about twenty minutes over the Bois de Bologne. A second ascent was made the following year, flying across Paris to Marolles-en-Brie.36 The Irish Times reported on the event:
‘Another interesting experiment in aerial navigation was tried on Friday by the brothers Gaston and Albert Tissandier; in shape their balloon resembles that of M. Giffard. The motive force is furnished by a Siemens dynamo which moves a screw. After leaving its moorings the balloon was carried by a strong west wind to the Seine, when its occupants set the screw in motion and caused it to remain almost stationary. It was then allo
wed to go with the current. After this it several times made headway against it. It was noticed that while the screw was working, the reporters, who followed in a carriage, could easily keep pace with it, but when the motion stopped and the wind was allowed to have its own way, they were immediately left far behind.’37
The Tissandier brothers’ airship.
On 8 August 1884, French Army Balloon Corps Captains, Charles Renard (1847–1905) and Arthur Krebs (1850–1935), took off from the French Army balloon establishment at Chalais-Meudon Park, in the electrically-powered (batteries and 8 hp (5.92 kW) electric motor) dirigible, La France, which had a capacity of 66,000 cubic feet (1868 cubic metres). It had a very large, two-bladed propeller at the front of the bamboo, canvas-covered car and at the rear, a rudder and an elevator. The envelope was 165 feet (50.29 metres) in length, had a maximum diameter of 27 feet 6 inches (8.38 metres) and was made from varnished Chinese silk. It was the first aircraft in history to return to its starting point against the wind, making a return trip of twenty-three minutes, covering 5 miles (8 km). The pilots described their trip as follows:
‘At four o’clock on a particularly calm afternoon the balloon, set free and having a very low ascensional force, rose up slowly to the height of the surrounding plateaux. The engine was put into motion and soon, under its impulse, the balloon increased its speed, faithfully obeying the slightest action of its rudder.’38
Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs.
La France at Chalais in 1884.
They steered for Villacoublay, and over the town executed a broad turn and proceeded back to Chalais at a height of about 1000 feet (304 metres). They commenced their descent above the landing field:
‘During this time we had to go backwards and forwards several times in order to keep the balloon over the landing point. At a height of 250 feet (76 metres) we dropped a rope, which was seized by men on the ground and the balloon was brought back to the same meadow from where it had left.’39
In the words of the correspondent writing for the Irish Times:
‘The apparatus is described as a balloon pointed at both ends like a whaleboat, and holding the usual supply of gas. Below is a net containing, in addition to the officer who attended the valve and the other who steered, certain electrical accumulators, which supplied a motor, employed to set in motion a screw propeller by which the balloon, so far as we can make out, is not only driven in space, but also to some extent guided in the same way that a ship is directed in its true course by means of a rudder.’40
Renard informed the press that his flight was just the start of a revolution, not only in aerostatics, but also in warfare, with armies being flown vast distances across trackless wastes to relieve beleaguered cities such as Khartoum – which was at that time much featured in the daily news and was eventually relieved (but not by air) in January 1885, just two days after the death of General Gordon. He also predicted aerial services for passengers and mails. Several further successful flights were made over the course of the following year.
Then, in 1885, Gottlieb Daimler produced the world’s first practical, petrol-driven, internal combustion engine, which could be developed as a power unit with a power to weight ratio suitable for propelling vehicles on land, sea and in the air. The original model had been invented eight years before by Nikolaus Otto. The year also brought the establishment of a permanent military balloon arm in Germany with the creation of the Preussische Luftschiffer-Abteilung at Berlin-Schöneberg. A few years later a Military School of Ballooning for the Bavarian Army was set up at Munich and a Balloon Corps was founded in Vienna.
Nor was the potential of military aviation ignored by the writers of popular fiction. In 1886, inspired by the feat of Renard and Krebs, the famed author of science fiction, Jules Verne, published The Clipper of the Clouds, which described the use of dirigibles as forces for good and evil. Another French author and illustrator, Albert Robida, wrote in 1887, La Guerre au Vingtième Siècle (War in the Twentieth Century), which foresaw a sudden devastating strike from the air by aerial torpedoes launched from aircraft powered by electricity.41
The Royal Engineers Balloon Section
Meanwhile, returning to the British Army’s aviation activities in June 1883, Major Lee, RE, and Lieutenant Francis Trollope, Grenadier Guards, were sent to Paris to visit the balloon exhibition and report on what they saw. Then, in September 1884, the centenary of ballooning in England was celebrated in the grounds of the Artillery Company, at Finsbury in London, by the ascent of several balloons and a lecture from M. de Fouville, President of the Academie de Aérostation, Paris. While this was going on the Royal Engineers were also developing their aeronautical skills by preparing for a deployment overseas. A significant development was the introduction, in 1884, of steel cylinders which could store hydrogen under compression and so transport supplies of the gas for use in the field. Balloons could now be inflated in ten or fifteen minutes. One of the most difficult problems to overcome was the design of a valve secure enough to prevent the leakage of hydrogen.42 A balloon section, with three balloons, Heron, Spy and Feo, ten NCOs and sappers, commanded by Major Elsdale, RE, with Lieutenant Trollope, accompanied a substantial army expedition under the command of Major General Sir Charles Warren, consisting of some 4000 infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineers, to Bechuanaland in November 1884. The aim was to assert British sovereignty and, ‘To deal with Boer raiders and to pacify the country.’43 A local chief, Montsiou, was taken up for a flight and observed:
‘If the first white man who came into this country had brought a thing like that and, having gone up in it before our eyes, had come down and demanded that we should worship and serve him, we should have done so. The English indeed have great power.’44
Sir Charles Warren was taken aloft in Heron in April 1885 at Mafeking and was impressed by the view of the surrounding countryside that could be obtained. It was discovered that the lifting capacity of the balloons was impaired the higher above sea level they operated. It was also noted that the conduct and ability of ground staff was vital to the success of aerial operations.45 Moreover, it was shown that a detachment of only ten men was too small for the effective working of the equipment.46
A Royal Engineers mobile balloon section.
Major Templer led a section of eight NCOs and men, as well as the three balloons, Scout, Fly and Sapper, which travelled to the Sudan (or the Soudan – as it was termed in the contemporary newspapers) in February 1885 (following the death of General Gordon at Khartoum) as part of the protection for a military railway construction project. The materials taken also included 120 cylinders of hydrogen, a compressor, searchlights, and signalling equipment. Camels were used to transport the gas cylinders. No doubt the heart of one of the expedition’s staff officers, Major George Grover, RE, was gladdened by this demonstration of this aeronautical progress, albeit some twenty years after he had first proposed it. One particularly noteworthy event occurred on 25 March, when Lieutenant R.J.H.L. Mackenzie, RE, remained aloft for seven hours in the balloon Scout during a route march, towed by a mule carriage in the convoy, with a further guide rope attached to a mounted horseman, messages to the ground being passed down via the latter:
‘When the convoy was ready to move, the balloon, still two hundred feet up, was made fast to a cart in the centre of the square. It was rather difficult to avoid jerking the cords which held it, and thus running the chance of breaking them; but extreme care was taken when crossing any rough pieces of ground, as it would not have been unpleasant for the occupant of the car if he had suddenly found himself floating quietly towards the mountains, miles beyond the reach of any friends. Communication was kept up with the balloon by means of written messages, and it was not long before a letter came down telling us that the enemy were still pursuing the stampeded camels down towards the sea and killing them as soon as they got up with them. The force reached the zaribas at last, unmolested, when the balloon was hauled down and packed up, the gas being as far as possible sa
ved for future use. Thus the first ascent may be chronicled as a success.’47
An artist’s impression of a military balloon being inflated in the Sudan in 1885.
Mackenzie was therefore the first British airman to carry out his ‘force protection’ duties in the presence of the enemy, namely the Mahdi’s Dervish warriors. The Irish Times reported that:
‘The convoy with the captive balloon were in no way molested, which can scarcely be wondered at if the rebels were as astonished by the strange spectacle as have been the natives of Suakin. The native gossips here are all agog at the startling phenomenon and the bazaars throughout the day have been in a perfect ferment upon the subject. Even now they have not apparently satisfied themselves as to the origin and uses of a war balloon.’48
