Ghosts of Engines Past
Page 34
Your friend and servant,
Mr. Michael Fletcher,
Lieutenant,
57th Regt.
12. STEAMGOTHIC
It is 2012, but 1852 is not out of reach. Some very brave people are about to fly the first steam powered aircraft, and diet will mean the difference between life and death.
Steampunk is all about style, fashion, steam and elegance, and I conclude this collection by asking if it is only the stuff of dreams. Real steam engines are not all that efficient, but you could power an aircraft with one. Just. Only just. A steam powered aircraft? That would be the ultimate steampunk fashion accessory. Is it just a romantic dream? I built a glider based on ideas about aircraft that were current in the 1850s, and it did fly fairly well. I then did some calculations about the weight of steam engines and the power needed to get something about size of the Wright Brother's Flyer into the air. It turned out to be feasible. Steampunk fashionistas, take note, however. Steam powered flight might be possible, but as I said when introducing Eight Miles, don't try this at home.
~~~
There is something special about things that changed the world. I cannot say what it is, but I can feel it. I have stood before the Vostok capsule that carried the first man into space. Influence glowed from it. I knew where it was even with my eyes closed. In the Spurlock Museum I saw the strange, twisted, lumpy thing that was the first transistor. The significance that it radiated was like the heat from a fire. The Babbage Analytical Engine of 1871 had no such aura, yet the whole of Bletchley Park did. There was no doubt in my mind about which of them had really launched the age of computers.
The Wright Brother's Flyer had no feeling of significance for me either. This made no sense. It was the first heavier than air machine to fly, it proved the principle, it changed the world, yet my strange intuition said otherwise. Then I saw the Aeronaute, and everything should have become clear to me.
There was an 1899 Daimler parked across the road from my flat when I arrived home from work. Admirers were milling around it, and a security guard was making sure that nobody took any liberties. I knew early model cars fairly well after being dragged along to countless car shows by my father, but cars are not my thing. Pausing only to admire the Daimler as something Art Nouveau that actually worked, I opened my front door.
On top of several packages of things ordered online was a large envelope. I seldom get letters. Anything that can be turned into text or pixels comes over the Internet. The address on the envelope was handwritten, and the handwriting was clear, elegant copperplate. A genuine penny stamp was at the top right hand corner, but there was no postmark. This had been delivered by hand. Who writes copperplate in the second decade of the Twenty-First Century? I wondered. Picking it up was like stepping back into time, and it begged to be opened by something with more class than my front door key.
Going upstairs, I found a real letter opener in the shape of a medieval sword, bought on some trip to the British Museum. The covering note merely said “Dear Mr Chandler, can I have your opinion on the enclosed photos? Yours sincerely, Louise Penderan.” There were four photographs with the note, all colour prints on A4 paper. They were of the wreckage of an aircraft that had never existed.
Take a modern ultralight, describe it verbally to a mid-Nineteenth Century engineer, have him build one, then crash it. That was the subject of the first photo. Unlike most Nineteenth Century machines, this aircraft seemed not to have an ounce of excess weight. The background suggested that it was in a barn.
The second photograph showed four lightweight cylinders that were connected in a spiral pattern to a crankshaft. This was a steam engine, and it was also built to minimize weight. The next photograph showed a propeller that resembled a windmill with two blades. The last picture featured what was left of a cloth panel with the word AERONAUTE painted in silver.
The doorbell chimed while I was still examining the photos. It was 6pm, not the usual time for people pedaling telco plans or religious salvation, and my friends always texted me before coming over. As I walked down the stairs I had a feeling that whoever was outside was connected with the envelope. It had been just five minutes since I had arrived home. Perhaps they had been waiting in the café over the road, giving me those minutes to examine the photographs. Perhaps they even owned the 1899 Daimler.
I opened the door to a couple dressed in matching brown ankle coats and wearing motoring goggles on their foreheads. I am six feet tall, yet they were both tall enough to look down at me. The woman gleamed with silver jewelry, mostly in the shape of electroplated cog wheels, dials and piping.
“Are you Leon Chandler?” she asked, giving me an overwhelmingly broad smile.
Her eyes were large, intense and just a little sly. They did not match her smile. I held up the photos.
“Yes, and you must be Louise Penderan,” I replied.
She nodded. “That's me, and this is my partner, James Jamison.”
James Jamison managed to sneer while smiling, then slowly, reluctantly, extended his hand. I registered the slight, ignored his hand, and gestured up the stairs.
“Won't you come in?” I said, moving aside.
My flat is above a shop, but it is quite large. I showed them into the living room, where they paused to look around. Their eyes lingered on the model steam engines that were on the bookshelves, and mantelpiece, and were crowded into the display cases and crystal cabinet.
“Did you build all these?” asked James, making the question sound like an accusation.
“Yes, I specialise in steam engines by the pioneers: Newcombe, Papin, Heron, Trevithick, Watt, and so on. They all work.”
“Yet you dress in black and have a signed Alice Cooper poster on the wall,” he observed.
“Cool music.”
“Your furniture and all your walls are black.”
“Black is relaxing.”
“So you're a Goth?”
“You may have noticed the sign on the door: SteamGoth Models.”
I like to keep people guessing. Those who are too cool for school think that all steamheads wear anoraks and stand about on railway platforms spotting trains. After surviving a childhood of ridicule and bullying because I made models instead of playing online games, I had opted to dress cool, make models, and generally be a bit peculiar as an adult.
“Your models are quite beautiful,” said Louise, who was caressing the boiler of a Newcombe engine with an ochre fingernail cut to a talon shape.
“It's just a hobby, but it pays.”
“We actually need a professional,” said James, rather abruptly.
Suddenly I had their measure. James was abrasive, but Louise followed him with praise. I was being conditioned to be sympathetic to her. She wanted something from me, something related to the wreck in the barn. I decided to force the issue.
“Well then, you might as well leave,” I said, gesturing to the stairs.
James had actually reached the stairs before he realized that Louise was not with him. There was a hostile exchange of glances between the two of them.
“Perhaps James expressed himself a little awkwardly,” she said. “We need a professional, and you are perfect.”
James capitulated. Now I knew who had paid for the Daimler.
While I rather like the theory of steampunk fashion, I keep my distance from it. I prefer cogwheels to turn each other, not just be on display. I think that nothing is truly beautiful unless it works. For my real job I customise engines for an ultralight aircraft company, and my flat contains not a single painting or decorative vase. My Alice Cooper poster once advertised something, so it passed my functionality test. It was dad who made me this way. He had bought an old Mini Minor a year before I was born, and a quarter of a century later the little car was still scattered all over his garage floor, supposedly being restored. From a lifetime of watching him obsessively wipe, oil and polish parts that are never reassembled, I had developed a love of things that actually do something.
“What do you think of the Aeronaute?” Louise asked.
I had decided that the aircraft was a modern steampunk sculpture, something from a pretend history. I dislike sculptures, they are form without function.
“It looks like some retro steam powered aircraft that never was,” I replied, already thinking about what to have for dinner, and wondering if a well crafted insult might send them storming off down the stairs.
“The date stamped into the engine is 1852.”
That was a shock. My pulse quickened as I picked up the photos and looked at them more closely. The engine was very lightly built, and the Aeronaute's frame was all thin spars, wire and wicker. Even a moderate wind would demolish it, but on a calm day it just might have struggled into the air.
I began to trawl my memories for steam aircraft. The Besler brothers had flown a steam powered biplane in 1933, and the first balloon propelled by a steam engine had flown in 1852. Steam engines are external combustion machines, so they have low power to weight ratios. They are not ideal for aviation, but neither are they out of the question.
The Aeronaute might not be a hoax, I realised. Aviation history might have to be rewritten. The temptation to babble hysterically was almost overwhelming, but I forced my voice to remain level and spoke slowly.
“Where were these photos taken?” I asked.
“On my family's estate, in Kent,” said Louise.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
I arrived at the estate the very next morning, riding my black Vespa. One of the groundsmen told me to be off or he would call the police.
“Let me guess,” I said as I removed my helmet. “Louise Penderan's boyfriend told you to chase away any visitors wearing black.”
He pointed to the gate and opened his mouth to shout—then apparently realized that what I had just said was true, and remembered who was paying his wages. Without another word he went into the house, then Louise came out and welcomed me. She was now wearing black overalls, a bandolier of chrome plated tools, and a technoGoth hairpin-screwdriver. Without her high heeled laceup boots she was barely my height. James followed her, dressed in immaculate Belle Epoch motoring gear and looking unhappy.
The barn where the Aeronaute had been kept for over a century and a half was in a field behind the house.
“My family knew about it for generations, but they treated it as a bit of a joke,” she explained as we crossed the field. “Nobody ever bothered to tell me, because I think countryside stuff is only for driving past, you know? James and I came here yesterday to check if the barn was okay for our big steampunk wedding reception.”
“We're getting married!” declared James, like a sentry challenging an intruder.
“I can hardly believe the Aeronaute's condition,” I said. “After a hundred and fifty years of corrosion, dry rot and borers it ought to be a pile of rust and sawdust.”
“The daughter of the man who probably built it, Lucy Penderan, was obsessed about preserving it in memory of him. A family tradition of looking after it had developed by the time she died in 1920. The field hands give it a new coat of wax every year at midsummer.”
The doors of the barn had been pushed wide open, and the aura of something that had changed the world was so strong that I began to tremble. I walked in slowly, feeling like an astronaut taking his first steps on the moon. As I got closer I saw that the Aeronaute's wreckage really was in remarkably good condition, given its age. The engine and broken airframe were preserved under coats of wax, and the silk on the wings had become like waxed cardboard.
Weight was not an issue for Nineteenth Century steam engines, because they powered big things like trains, ships or machinery in factories. By contrast, the Aeronaute's engine had not an ounce of excess weight. The fuel was oil sprayed into a furnace chamber to heat a coil boiler, and the steam was recycled through an air-cooled condenser. What alarmed me was that the fuel tank was heated by a naked flame, so that the oil would spray out under pressure. That saved the weight of a pump but increased the danger of an explosion.
“Could it have flown?” asked Louise after I had spent some minutes pacing around it with my mouth open.
“By modern safety standards it's an unexploded bomb,” I said, tapping at the fuel tank. “That said... yes, perhaps.”
“Could it be repaired and flown?”
“Restoration, no problem,” I replied, then shrugged and shook my head.
“So you don't think it can fly?”
“It's bound to be grossly underpowered for its weight, but with a long enough takeoff run and a very light pilot, it just might get above stall speed.”
“You mean fly?”
“Yes. For a few minutes.”
“Why only minutes?” asked James, desperate to disagree with me about anything.
“Extra fuel is extra weight. Carry enough fuel for a long flight and it would be too heavy to get off the ground.”
“But it can definitely fly?” asked Louise.
“Possibly, not definitely. Until the engine is restored and tested, we won't know if it's powerful enough to be useful. The Aeronaute may be a failed experiment, even if it's genuine.”
The manor house was a mixture of Regency, Victorian and Edwardian architecture, with a few more modern enhancements that had probably not been cleared with English Heritage. Coffee was served to us by a Roumanian maid. Louise's parents had the easy going manner of people who were so rich that they did not have to prove anything to anyone.
“Firstly, who built the Aeronaute?” I asked once introductions and pleasantries were out of the way.
“Nobody knows,” said her father. “The estate registers show that our farm workers have painted it with wax every year since mid-1852. That was just after William Penderan died in a riding accident, so my money is on William.”
“The date is far too early,” I began, then paused and thought about it. “Actually, perhaps not. William Henson designed his Aerial Steam Carriage in 1843, and John Stringfellow flew a steam powered model in 1848. George Cayley built a glider in 1853, and his coachman flew it over Brompton Dale.”
“So the Aeronaute's age is not, er, impossible?”
“1852 is not only possible, it's unnervingly likely. That was an exciting decade for British aviation.”
“Just think, all these years and we never knew,” he said with a sigh.
“Another question,” I said, turning to Louise. “Why me?”
“I found you with Google. You build historical steam engines and work for an ultralight aircraft company. The combination seemed perfect.”
I already knew the answer to my third question, but I asked it anyway.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“How much would you charge to restore the Aeronaute?”
How much would I charge? I very nearly burst out laughing. It was more like how much would I pay to be allowed to work on it.
“I can do the engine,” I said, struggling to sound cool. “That would not cost much, but the woodwork and fabric will need specialist restorers and materials.”
“So you can't help?” asked James eagerly.
“Oh I can help,” I said as I took out my phone. “The director of Ultralights Unlimited has had experience restoring World War One fighters. I'll give him a call now.”
Giles Gibson made the journey from London to Kent on his vintage BSA motorbike in less than an hour. James's reaction upon meeting him was one of instant hatred. Giles not only wore period motoring gear, he was a real pilot. He made things worse by complimenting Louise on her neo-industrial outfit, while ignoring what James was wearing.
Our inspection took about an hour. The Aeronaute had been in storage for a century and a half, so in spite of nearly thirteen dozen coatings of hot wax, even some of the undamaged wood needed replacing. The wax had saved the engine from corrosion, however.
�
�Well, steamgoth, how long before we have steam?” Giles asked, tapping the engine with a knuckle.
“The engine will have to be stripped down, checked for damage, cleaned and reassembled. With big budget help, a few weeks.”
“Hey, I run Ultralights Unlimited, not NASA. Big budget help is not an option.”
“No, it's our first option.”
Giles blinked at me.
“What do you mean?”
“This is Britain, Giles. Once word gets out that a genuine mid-Victorian, steam powered aircraft has been discovered, there'll be a queue of steamheads stretching from Kent to London, all volunteering to work on it.”
“Could it fly?” asked Louise.
“It's underpowered, overweight and aerodynamically unstable,” said Giles.
“Is that a no?”
“It's a don't know. While we're restoring the Aeronaute, we can find out by running computer simulations, then build a full scale mockup with a petrol engine. If the mockup can take off, we have a yes.”
“You can use the barn,” said her father eagerly.
“But what about the wedding reception?” exclaimed James.
“We haven't fixed a date for that yet,” said Louise, to Giles rather than James.
“Man, we'll need to work hard and fast, or this could be like Stonehenge,” said Giles. “You know, left as a glorious ruin, not restored. There's always going to be heritage airheads who want that.”
“That's terrible!” exclaimed Louise.