Up to the Sky in Ships

by A Bertram Chandler

  "And if these bombs work," said Bannerman thoughtfully, "we'll be in on the ground floor. If the airships work, that is.... All right, Mick, you just carry on unloading the second-hand stuff on to Hanrahan so that the next shipload of Irish Volunteers is armed as well as the Union Army was at Gettysburg. And I'll be seeing Mr. Solomon Andrews in Perth Amboy and Dr. Gatling at Hartford....

  "I'll say this for you—you're a salesman. I like the way you put it—fighting today's war with the weapons of the next one. Now all you have to do is convince the man Kelly and his American backers. I hope you do —if only to wipe the grin off the faces of the lousy British!"

  The eventual success of the Australian Revolution owed much to the inventive genius of two men—Solomon Andrews and Richard Gatling. Both were prolific inventors. Both were more than merely competent physicians—and yet they owe their fame to the killing machines that they produced. The British and pro-British forces fighting in Australia were, of course, equipped with Gatling guns but, once the supply of arms from the USA was in full swing, only the Australian Army and Navy had at their disposal the steam-operated weapons with their bigger caliber and far higher rate of fire. It is on record that both Francis Bannerman and Dr. Gatling tried to interest the British military establishment in these weapons. One elderly General is supposed to have said, "Damn it, sir! Warfare is for soldiers, not engineers!"

  Similarly, neither the War Office nor the Admiralty wanted anything to do with Dr. Solomon Andrews' Aereon. High-ranking bureaucrats, admirals, and generals were quite unanimous: "If God had meant us to fly, He'd have given us wings."

  British sympathizers must have seen the test flights of the first of the Andrews airships —Pride of Erin. Word must have reached Imperial Army Headquarters in Sydney of the thing that flew against the wind, swooping and soaring, circling. But neither for the first time in history nor the last were eyewitness reports disbelieved and derided.

  So the rebels had a balloon. So what? Observation balloons were nothing new. They had their uses but, in the long run, they were rather more trouble than they were worth. A balloonist could watch a cavalry charge but he couldn't do anything to stop it.

  Meanwhile the first consignment of dynamite bombs arrived in Adelaide—then still in Imperial hands — packed in cases which, according to the ship's manifest, contained canned meats. By an overland route they found their way first to Melbourne and then to General Kelly's headquarters at Glenrowan.

  The arrival of the train with the new bombs was the only good news that day. The pro-British forces were making a determined thrust south from the New South Wales border, with horse, foot and artillery. General Kelly had sent one of his armored trains, under Colonel Hart, north to stem the advance. In an earlier action, near Wangaratta, the Imperial cavalry had attempted to charge one of these monsters but had been mown down—but even the cavalry commanders of those days were capable of learning by experience.

  This time there was a pretended retreat, a withdrawal before the deadly 11/2-inch Gatling cannon, firing cannister, could be brought to bear. A small party of brave men, hidden in the bushes at the side of the track, remained behind. It was their duty to jerk the wires that would initiate the detonation of the mines buried under the permanent way.

  It was a Lieutenant Coverley of the Royal Artillery who was in charge. Had he survived the engagement it is probable that he would have reached high rank in the military profession. He allowed the two leading cars, which were forward of the locomotive, to pass over the explosive charges, giving the order to fire only when the engine was almost at the danger point.

  According to contemporary accounts the locomotive rose bodily into the air in a cloud of smoke and steam, disintegrating as it did so. When it came down there was another explosion— this time the boiler. Colonel Hart, the driver, Angus McPhail, and the two firemen, Peter Wherret and Isaac Sangster, were all killed.

  But, fantastically, none of the cars was overturned although those behind the engine, four of them, were all derailed. In one of these were six horses. Captain McVicar ordered these disembarked and then sent Sergeant Murphy and Private Kennedy galloping to Wangaratta, which was in Rebel hands, so that an urgent telegram, with news of the disaster, could be despatched to Glenrowan.

  The news reached Kelly while Brown—now Major Brown— the pharmacist turned military engineer, was supervising the unpacking of the dynamite bombs. They had been shipped unassembled—the bombs themselves, plain metal cylinders with open tubes running through them longitudinally, the primers, smaller cylinders that would fit inside the tubes, and the "pistols", each with a nipple containing fulminate of mercury that, when the bomb was armed, would fit snugly into the can of guncotton. Each item, of course, was in its own packing case and the detonators were nested in cotton wool.

  Major Brown became aware that Kelly was bellowing orders.

  "Duval—I want the Pride of Erin airborne! Yes, now! Never mind the leak —just daub it with tar or something! Brown! Where the hell are ye? Get that generator o' yours workin'! An' how many riflemen can the Pride carry?"

  Brown walked to where Kelly was still roaring orders. "What's wrong, General?"

  "What's wrong, ye ask? The bastard British have got Steve and his train, that's what. At Byawalla. The only way that we can get help to them in time is by air.... "

  "With four riflemen in an airship, General?"

  "How else, damn ye?"

  "But the bombs have come."

  "The bombs... ," repeated Kelly. "The bombs.... " Then, "Are ye sure they'll work?"

  "The thing that scares me," said Brown, "is that they might work too soon!"

  Fortunately his men were capable of operating the hydrogen gas generator without his supervision, and while he was assembling the bombs—priming but not arming them—the Pride of Erin, the wrinkles smoothing out from her starboard gasbag (the one with the slow leak), was straining at the mooring lines that secured her to the ground. Duval—according to Joe Byrne—looked as though he were about to shit himself as he watched. Kelly had decided that the Chief Aeronaut would be the pilot and that he, himself, would be the bombardier. Apart from anything else, he was one of the few men in the camp capable of lifting one of the dynamite cannisters by himself.

  Brown had four of the bombs loaded into the car and ballast thrown out to compensate. Using a fifth bomb he gave Kelly hasty instructions. "When the bombs are primed, General, they're still fairly safe—but once you shove home the 'pistol,' the detonator, like so, the slightest jar is apt to set them off. Here are the four 'pistols' for the bombs that you'll be carrying....

  "Arm the bombs now!" ordered Kelly.

  "But, General.... "

  "When I carry a weapon, Major Brown, I want it ready for use at once, not after ten minutes or so fartin' about!" So Brown armed the four bombs in the airship's car.

  At three o'clock on the afternoon of a fine summer's day, with the wind blowing from the north at about five knots, the Pride of Erin lifted sluggishly from the Kelly headquarters. Many history books give this date, December 14, 1883, as that of the first bombing raid in history. This is not correct. In 1849 the Austrians attempted to bomb Venice from unmanned Montgolfier balloons. Nonetheless the Battle of Byawalla was the first occasion when bombs were dropped from a manned aircraft.

  Despite the head wind the Pride of Erin made good time. The hastily applied patch on the envelope of the starboard gasbag— a square of linen stitched on with coarse thread and smeared with hot beeswax — seemed to be holding. Ballast—there was not much of it to play with—was dumped, and the dirigible glided skywards at a shallow angle. At about 2000 feet Duval, increasingly worried about the untested repairs, valved hydrogen and made a downwards swoop. It was a shallow dive; of necessity he was sacrificing speed for the conservation of lift and ballast.

  There was an altercation between the General and his Chief Balloonist, but Kelly finally saw reason— or Duval's version of it—and allowed the aeronaut to do things his w
ay. (It has been suggested that Duval was afraid that too steep an ascent or descent might cause the primed and armed dynamite bombs to roll, to come into violent contact with each other, thus jarring the unstable fulminate of mercury into premature detonation.)

  The Aereon passed over Wangaratta, where people in the streets of the little town stared upwards, pointed, and waved. She followed the railway line to the north-east. Duval climbed again in preparation for the final swoop. The armored train was within sight. Its crew was still holding out. They were protected by the armored sides of the cars and, very fortunately as it turned out, Colonel Hart had insisted that rifles and ammunition for the entire crew be carried. Somebody had managed to convert one of the Gatlings to manual operation, but its fire was slow and hesitant.

  On both sides of the track were the Imperial forces, pouring volley after disciplined volley into the crippled train. Perhaps they were not—as yet—doing much damage, but their supply of ammunition was not likely to run out.

  And there was the artillery that had been brought up, two six-pounders. The guns had not yet been brought into action but they were being deployed, the crews manhandling them to a position on a low hill to the east of the railway track. The gunners, in their blue and scarlet uniforms, must have been sweating like pigs in the hot afternoon sun but they were working with calm efficiency, hauling up the ammunition carts with balls and powder, the water tubs, and the sponges on their long handles.

  Nobody, either aboard the train or on the ground, looked up as the Pride of Erin swept overhead.

  It was General Kelly's intention to turn and to bomb the six-pounder battery on the return run to the southward. The wind, however, was now somewhat west of north and increasing, and the dirigible was blown off course. Duval did his best to cope with the changing circumstances, but on her final, downswooping run the airship was coming from almost directly behind the gunners, who were in a direct line with the crippled armored train. And those cannon were now loaded, were being laid and trained.

  Kelly, grunting with the effort, lifted the first of the dynamite bombs, held it out over the side of the car. He dropped it. He turned and stooped, picked up the second one, then the third, then the fourth. The Pride of Erin was rising steeply now, almost out of control. Looking down and astern Kelly saw the first bomb hit, saw the flash, and heard the ear-shattering roar. It was not quite a direct hit, but the two guns were knocked off their wheeled carriages. There was a secondary explosion as the ammunition cart went up. He saw the second and third bombs strike—falling, as he had intended, among the infantrymen.

  The fourth bomb, he was to admit afterwards, he should never have dropped. He should have realized that with the rapidly increasing altitude of the airship its trajectory was extended. It scored a direct hit on that car of the armored train in which the bulk of the Gatling ammunition had been stored.

  But that, at the moment, was the least of his worries.

  The hastily applied patch had blown and the airship was losing altitude. Fortunately, with all his faults, Duval had developed into a superb airshipman and the Pride of Erin, with the following wind assisting her, almost made it back to Glenrowan, finally touching down on the railway lines with everything possible jettisoned, even to the uniforms of the two men, in the fight for buoyancy.

  "'Tis a pity, Ned," said Joe Byrne, "that ye had to get our train as well as the British guns.... Sort of throwing out the baby with the bath water.... "

  "Such is life," the General is supposed to have growled.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE:

  Dr. Solomon Andrews (1806-1872) was both a physician and a remarkably prolific inventor. His "Aereon" was patented in 1864, after its first successful flights. Quite fantastically, he was unable to gain support from either military or commercial interests and, even more fantastically, he is not represented in the Lighter Than Air Gallery of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. Nonetheless, I have to thank Mr. Philip D. Edwards, one of NASM's Technical Information Specialists, for finally unearthing for me the patent taken out by Dr. Andrews.

  Professor Lowe was the Union Army's Chief Balloonist during the War Between The States. He invented the mobile hydrogen gas generator, which was used for the inflation of observation balloons. I must thank Miss Brenda Beasley, of the National Archives, Washington, D.C., for helping me to find the specifications and operating instructions for this device.

  Francis Bannerman set up as a second-hand arms merchant shortly after the conclusion of the War Between the States, purchasing both Union and Confederate weaponry and selling it to anybody as long as it was "cash on the nail." He is reputed to have armed just about every South American revolution during the late 1800's. I am indebted to Mr. Goins, curator of the Division of Military History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., for valuable information regarding Bannerman and his activities.

  Dr. Richard Gatling invented the machine gun that bears his name, patenting it in 1862. Perhaps the steam-operated Gatling is my invention—although Gatling himself must have toyed with the idea. Nonetheless he did produce an electrically-operated gun, with a very high rate of fire, in 1890. So far as I know there were no buyers. The electrically operated Vulcan machine gun, however, used by today's American air forces, is a direct descendant of the Gatling.

  With respect to the dynamite bombs used in this story, I admit that they are modeled very closely on the depth charges that were among my toys during World War Two, although with these the 'Pistol" was fired hydrostatically and not by impact. In actual history the first use of modern high explosive in warfare was during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).

  Finally, as we know from comparatively recent history, civil wars are ideal opportunities for helpful outsiders to try out new and hitherto untested weapons.

  THE UNHARMONIOUS WORD

  They come and they go, these parlour games played on fancy boards and with fancy counters, tiles or whatever. Mah Jong had its day, as did Monopoly. Now Scrabble is all the rage — and I, for one, will be rather relieved to see it superseded by some other ingenious method of wasting time. It's ... dangerous. Oh, I admit that the conditions were just right—but I'm not altogether convinced that the pentagram was essential, not for the actual calling, that is. There's always the chance, and not overly slim, either, that some desperate, point hungry player might stumble again upon that literally unholy combination of vowels and high scoring consonants. (Frankly, I shouldn't mind doing it again myself just once; just once and with proper safeguards.)

  We were three nights out from Liverpool when I saw the game for the first time. I'd left the bridge at 8 p.m., as usual, and had made my usual rounds; then, on my way back to the officers' flat, I looked into the Smoking Room. There were three of them playing Scrabble — the others, with the Old Man, were playing cards. There was Mrs Wade, a middle-aged school-mistress, Mrs Haldane, the widow of an Australian businessman, and Mr Whitley. who was supposed to be an author of sorts—although I've yet to see anything of his in print.

  Mrs Wade and Whitley were quarrelling violently.

  "It is a verb!" Whitley was saying. "Mind you," he went on virtuously, "I wouldn't use it as such. I have too much respect for syntax. But it is a verb.

  "It's not, I'm telling you. Oh, here's the Chief Officer, What do you think, Chief?"

  "What's it all about?" I asked.

  "Oh, you play the game like a crossword puzzle. Whoever starts does so in the middle, using as many tiles as possible—there a bonus of 50 points if you use all seven. Then the others build up and down and out from the original word — but it must be words, real words …"

  "It is a real word," said Whitley. "Look. Mrs Haldane went across from TAX, adding E and I and T to the X, and made EXIT. I added E and D, and got my D on a Double Word square, to make EXITED."

  "EXIT is not a verb!" almost screamed Mrs Wade.

  "But it is." Whitley picked up a heavy book. "It's in the dictionary. Here we are. 'Exit.' Verb intransitive. To go out;
depart."

  "Yes. It's in your dictionary. Your American dictionary?"

  "Has anybody a better one?" asked Whitley, reasonably enough. "I think I've seen it used in TIME," I said cautiously.

  "Yes — and 'balding,' too, no doubt. Americanisms!"

  Well, they went on arguing about it until Whitley, with a very bad grace indeed, withdrew the offending ED. The game finished shortly thereafter and Whitley excused himself, saying that he was going to write at least another chapter of his novel.

  "Going away to sulk, he means!" snorted Mrs Wade. "What about you, Chief? Will you play?"

  "I'd like to," I told her.

  Oh, it's a fascinating game all right, especially if one happens to be, as I am, a crossword puzzle addict. Every night after dinner I'd make up the four — it was always the same; Mrs Wade, Mrs Haldane, Whitley and myself. At times both Mrs Wade and Whitley would get rather peeved with me; they — one, as I have said, a schoolteacher and the other a writer —thought that they were the only ones who knew anything at all about words, and I was able, now and again, to score heavily with the name of some essentially maritime article. Mrs Haldane was less egotistical than the others, but played a sound, cautious game never leaving the way open for those following her to make a really high score.

  Did I say that we played every night? No —it wasn't quite every night, as a matter of fact. There were the five films—our ration for the voyage—to be shown, and one evening one of the other passengers, a rather too hearty life-and-soul-of-the-party type, decided to give an amateur conjuring show. It wasn't bad — although we would far sooner have played our usual Scrabble — and I don't think that anybody saw through more than half of his tricks.

  It was for one of his tricks that he used the pentagram. He had borrowed some black, greasy crayon (used for making separation marks on butter cartons, apple crates and the like) from the Second Mate, and with it drew the five pointed star on the linoleum of the Smoking Room deck. In the middle of this star he put a bucket, and in the bucket he burned an envelope alleged to contain a pound note borrowed from the Captain. The trouble started when it was discovered that something had gone wrong somewhere, and that the incinerated envelope had contained the pound note ... The Old Man was still more annoyed the next morning when the Chief Steward reported to him that neither scrubbing brushes, soap, water nor newfangled detergents would shift that pentagram.