The Man With His Head in the Clouds

by Richard O. Smith

  On Tuesday, July 30, 1822, about four o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Green, accompanied by Mr. S. V. Griffith, proprietor of the Cheltenham Chronicle, ascended from Cheltenham; the balloon went up in a most beautiful style, to the admiration of an immense assemblage of persons; it was visible for 25 minutes, and took a south-east direction. The Balloon descended near North Leach, but on touching the ground the aeronauts could not immediately extricate themselves: the balloon reascended, and the netting, being partly cut, gave way when about 30 feet from the earth, and Messrs. Green and Griffith were precipitated with great violence to the ground. Mr. Green received a serious contusion on the left side of the chest, and Mr. Griffith a severe injury of the spine.

  The balloon was secured about six o’clock the same evening, having fallen in a wheat field of Mr. Wright at Ecton Lodge, apparently without the least injury.

  As if the Sadlers hadn’t enough stalking dangers from weather, altitude and gas to contend with, they now also had to add murderous betting syndicates to their list of potential fatal concerns.

  12 AUGUST 1823: WORLD’S MOST MAGNIFICENT AND LARGEST BALLOON

  Father and son act the Sadlers were not lone operatives in the world of exhibition ballooning. They would often pop up supporting other aeronauts, though most probably for an agreed fee. On one occasion, their names appeared on handbills advertising - not in an understated way it has to be said - “THE WORLD’S MOST MAGNIFICENT AND LARGEST BALLOON”. In case that description risked being too modest, the owner got his own trumpet out of its case and proceeded to give it another long and loud blow: “My balloon far exceeds in magnitude and splendour any aerostation machine hitherto made or exhibited in any part of the entire world.” They were partial to an overstatement, were the Georgians.

  A Mr. Graham of London was responsible for this monster globe, and monster boast. He claimed the envelope was built with sufficient capacity for 250,000 gallons of gas, “which on this occasion will be supplied by the Imperial Gas Company”. His listed dimensions are relatively puny, being sixty by forty feet, so one suspects he was helping himself to a considerable amount of free Imperial gas for other reasons.

  Yet the balloon was exhibited at an Oxford Street drapers, where shoppers could see it after first parting with a shilling for the privilege. A further 3s 6d was required to be present at the launch site in the gardens of White Conduit House in Pentonville, “where Mr Graham will be assisted in inflation and ascent by the well-known and celebrated aeronauts Messrs Sadler”.

  Even by 1823, almost forty years since Sadler’s historic first flight, his was still the name to put on the poster if you wanted to attract punters to a ballooning event.

  12-13 SEPTEMBER 1823: SHEFFIELD

  Before undertaking the immensely dangerous York flight, where gales meant that landing was a dice throw with fate, the Sadlers had been experimenting with coal gas for ballooning.

  Although they were still called “fire balloons” in popular parlance, hydrogen had replaced hot air ballooning decades earlier. Now a third type of flying was available, an alternative to hydrogen: coal gas. Initially, however, coal gas seemed unlikely to replace hydrogen as the aeronaut’s lighter-than-air gas of choice.

  Windham now chalked up two uncharacteristic failures. Twice in Sheffield in September 1823 he had sold tickets for an advertised coal gas flight, but failed to ascend on both days when he was unable to raise the balloon even though the globe was visibly brimming with gas. He later attributed these two rare failures to “the density of the coal gas with which it was to be inflated and the humidity of the atmosphere”.

  This appears to have been an unusual double setback for Windham, as he tried on both the Friday and Saturday to launch to no avail. According to the Worcester Journal, he returned five days later with a hydrogen balloon, and this time was able to become airborne, travelling a distance of “17 miles in perfect safety”.

  SEPTEMBER 1823: YORK

  Surprisingly, Windham Sadler returned to coal gas for his next escapade in late September 1823 when he ascended from York - but only just. The transition from hydrogen was not always straightforward, as the latter of two ascents in York that month proved. He was not helped by yet another gale.

  Battered against the ancient city walls by a violent and persistent wind, Sadler was - not for the first time, it should be noted - reported as being fortunate to survive. Quite how delusional the Sadlers were in considering themselves immortal is surely open to psychological debate.

  Choosing to launch at Toft End near Micklegate, a single booming detonation from a signal gun at 11.30am indicated that the inflation process had begun. Not many locals were in attendance - in noticeable contrast to the huge crowds drawn from dawn at similar ascents. This was most likely for the very sensible reason that a storm was brewing.

  The First Royal Dragoons marching band then appeared, parading alongside the city walls. “About an hour before the ascent took place, a very heavy gale of wind came upon, accompanied with rain.”

  Worse was to be discovered. The gale had knocked the partially inflated balloon over and an inexpertly packed grappling iron with prongs facing upwards punctured the globe. Delayed by several hours, the car was finally fixed to the repaired balloon at 4.30pm, with the storm still raging.

  “Notwithstanding, Mr Sadler threw out ballast immediately. He had great difficulty in clearing the walls. Indeed the car was bashed with considerable force against them. But Mr Sadler cast himself down, guarding against the considerable shock and violence.”

  Having buffeted York’s city walls like a medieval invader, he finally rose clear. At which point he stood upright in the basket for the first time “to convince his anxious friends he was uninjured”.

  “The wind during the journey was very turbulent.” At one point, heading towards Selby, the balloon cart sliced through the tops of several elm trees “offering no obstacle to his progress, such was the violence of the winds”. Knocking him around the basket like a human pinball, the gale was disinclined to decrease in ferocity. Crashing through the tops of another wooden glade, Sadler squatted in the basket “to avoid being torn to pieces”.

  His earlier entanglement with the city walls had caused life-threatening damage to the balloon, as it has snapped the venting rope. This rendered Sadler unable to control the balloon’s deflation. He was thus left with only one landing option - optimistically throwing out the grappling irons when low enough to reach treetops.

  This he did, though at an impractically fast speed caused by the fully inflated balloon coupled with gale force winds. Several of the prongs snapped off due to the pressure, until his final grappling iron made contact with a willow tree. The stretching chain soon broke, but it had the fortuitous effect of slowing down the balloon.

  Seizing his chance, Sadler ejected himself from the balloon cart. After an aborted attempt to rupture his balloon by splitting it along a seam, he had decided to make a jump for the ground while he was close enough to earth to have a reasonable chance of survival. The gale then buffeted the globe onto a tree branch, lancing the balloon so thoroughly that it deflated instantaneously, crashing to the earth almost beside him.

  At 5.10pm he had landed - or, rather, ejected - at Snaith, six miles south of Selby.

  Although inevitably dazed, Sadler incurred remarkably few injuries. He was taken to Selby where his conditioned was described as “fatigued, but uninjured except for his hands”.

  He was certainly injured financially. Only £105 was taken in ticket sales, an amount which one local newspaper rued “would almost certainly not cover the cost of the inflation alone”. While hardly any locals were prepared to buy a ticket in the gale, “an immense crowd was collected in the adjacent streets”. Sadler described his flight into the angry face of a gale as a “tremendous experience”, which is further evidence that the Sadlers were born devoid of an anxiety gene.

&nbs
p; Presumably at some point over the next two hundred years balloonists had compiled enough experience to decide, “maybe we shouldn’t fly in gales as it’s really, really dangerous.” This was not a lesson any of the Sadlers learnt in their lifetime - with ultimately tragic consequences

  OCTOBER 1823: LIVERPOOL GAS

  Windham Sadler had by now been appointed as the manager of the Liverpool Gas Light Company, a commercial operation co-founded by his father in 1817. Sadler the elder had presumably persuaded the company’s board to appoint Windham as manager in spite of his son’s age and inexperience. Windham was only twenty years old at the time. Alongside his father, he was chiefly responsible for providing Liverpool with a coal gas works, predominately designed by the Sadler family. Cheap and readily manufactured coal gas was therefore only a turn of the tap away, which is probably why Windham continued moonlighting as a professional aeronaut, significantly making several flights in the north-west and utilising this local, and most probably free, gas resource.

  Windham used his locally sourced coal gas for a home town flight in Liverpool that was widely described as being his twentieth ascent.

  Coal gas was being used for ballooning from around 1821. The celebrated aeronaut Charles Green, who assisted Windham Sandler with a flight from Leeds in 1823, is usually credited as being the very first flyer to use coal gas for manned balloon flights, when he took off from London’s Green Park on 19 July 1821.

  13 OCTOBER 1823: BIRMINGHAM

  Forty-nine years after his father’s debut, balloonomania continued unabated - proven by a huge Birmingham crowd present for several hours before take-off to see Windham Sadler launch from the canal side area The Crescent. This time local schoolboys were entrusted with the responsibility of holding the ropes until the balloon was fully inflated.

  Tickets for the inner sanctum of the launch site exchanged hands for a comparatively modest 3s 6d each, revealing that the cost of a balloon spectator’s ticket had markedly declined. As had the asking price for a seat in Sadler’s balloon itself. Whereas over a decade previously a balloon ride could be secured for 100 guineas, now only 20 guineas was being asked.

  A Mr. James Busby had parted with 20 guineas to be Windham’s co-pilot. Busby had chosen a good day to fly, as the weather was calm and the flight, uncharacteristically for Sadler involvement, was free of any incident. Flying for only 25 minutes, the pair were reunited with land four miles due west of Stourbridge after completing their journey of 17 miles.

  3 APRIL 1824: PIMLICO TRAGEDY

  Tragedy stuck Sadler again. His second wife Martha (née Hancock) Sadler died in Pimlico on 3 April 1824, leaving her son Windham and husband James. Almost counterbalancing his continued fortuitous survival, Sadler had now suffered the devastation of seeing two wives die.

  3 MAY 1824: ROCHDALE

  By 1824 the burgeoning industrial town of Rochdale required a second gas works to meet expanding demand. Hence the Rochdale Gas Light and Coke Company opened a new gasworks, built in the classically Doric architectural style, in Dane Street. For this they booked a celebrity and his balloon: step forward and into the basket, one Mr. Sadler.

  Reports of the age illustrate a typically encountered research problem; we do not know which Sadler flew at Rochdale. It was almost certainly James’ son Windham - after all, though James Sadler was a contender for Britain’s most courageous man, even he is unlikely to have been flying again at the age of seventy-one. Even so, as with several much earlier flights in the second decade of the nineteenth century it is unclear as to whether it was father or son - Sadler senior or junior - piloting the balloon that took off at 2.30pm in serene conditions.

  The balloon was supplied by the new gas company. “At nearly half-past two, Mr. Sadler and companion stepped into the car, and after receiving the flags from Lady of the High Sheriff of the county. The balloon ascended slowly from the ground, amidst the cheers of well wishers giving them every success. After continuing in sight for thirty-five minutes, the voyagers descended having travelled only eight miles. Sadler and his friend arrived again in Rochdale that afternoon, to receive the acclamations of the people.”

  By the 1820s the press were beginning to include occasional quotes from the main protagonists of stories, although this was still decades away from becoming the mainstream practice associated with journalism today. Windham Sadler was quoted as saying: “Everything being properly so, a [large] quantity of ballast as to allow the slow power of ascent. The balloon rose, with a slow and steady ruction of North by West as the sun shone.” Another development was Sadler junior’s adoption of a more cautious approach to ballooning - his father would have quite probably gone more than eight miles in 35 minutes and shed the ballast before the launch.

  It is a portentous final statement from Windham Sadler, as the sun was not to shine on Sadler’s son for much longer. Windham Sadler died in anything but cautious circumstances a few months later, fatally crashing into a chimney.

  29 SEPTEMBER 1824: FATAL CRASH

  Making what was described as his 31st ascent by newspapers and obituarists, Windham Sadler took off from Bolton in the late summer of 1824. He was piloting the balloon with his manservant James Donnelly also aboard. Again, Sadler had opted to take off in conditions described as “high wind, rain and a dense and cloudy atmosphere being most unfavourable”. Similar conditions a few weeks earlier had resulted in him being repeatedly clattered against the city walls at York, before crashing violently into tree tops near Selby. Whereas in the past Windham had always got away with such obtuse recklessness, fortune was finally to turn against him.

  After the restraining ropes were released, Windham’s balloon rose at a disturbing pace due to a combination of high winds and likely over-inflation. Using coal gas again, he over-cautiously added more gas than was required, presumably in an attempt to avoid the problems encountered at his Sheffield and York flights.

  After being airborne for quarter of an hour, visibility was so poor in the driving rain that he decided to attempt a landing. Unable to control the balloon in violent winds, he struck a chimney stack so robustly that it was knocked down. Flying over Foxhill Bank, located between Blackburn and Accrington, Windham had thrown out a grappling hook. Connecting with a tree, the sudden force of the rope caused by the balloon’s velocity in the gale yanked Sadler out of the cart. He was left dangling upside down, clinging to the edge of the basket, before the constant buffeting of the car against the chimney’s remaining masonry caused him to lose his grip and fall. Eyewitnesses told a Blackburn newspaper that “he fell thirty yards into a meadow”.

  His servant Donnelly remained in the car and was blown for a further three miles by the strong gale, until he managed to jump out with the aid of the broken grappling iron. The balloon was later discovered on the other side of the country, floating off the coast near Bridlington.

  Although his servant Donnelly survived, Sadler died the next morning from injuries sustained in the crash - almost certainly without regaining consciousness. Donnelly was reported as having “injuries of a most serious kind”.

  Pronounced dead on 30 September 1824 in a room at an inn near the crash site where he had been taken to recuperate, he left a widow Elizabeth pregnant with his unborn daughter Catharine. At her birth she was subsequently given the middle name Windham in her late father’s honour. Tragedy struck the family again, when she died in Great Crosby aged only eighteen, and was buried in the same graveyard as her father.

  While a resident in Hanover Street, Liverpool, Windham had opened along with his wife Catherine a medicated bathing house specialising in warm vapours on the street where they lived. The successful business was maintained by his widow after Windham’s untimely death.

  Windham was buried, with six other members of the Sadler family including his 21-month-old son George (died in 1816) in nearby Christ Church graveyard in Hunter Street, Liverpool - a city he had helped shed light upon
. His wife Catherine died in 1832.

  27 MARCH 1828: DEATH AND GRUDGES

  Outliving his sons Windham by eighteen months and John by ten years, James Sadler died in 1828. His second wife Martha Hancock had predeceased him in 1824. For all his reckless escapades, death cheating balloon crashes and failures to turn up for his appointments with the Grim Reaper, it was a noticeable paradox that he died peacefully in his bed at the advanced age of seventy-five. “Our little lives are ended with a sleep,” as Shakespeare says.

  His death was bizarrely recorded by the Oxford University Herald three days later in the briefest of mentions, when the newspaper baldly stated: “Mr James Sadler, elder brother of Mr Sadler of Rose Hill, Oxford has died.” Not a jot about his internationally famous career as a world-changing aeronaut and inventor. James Sadler’s death made the front pages in France, but not in his own town. Sadler’s brother Thomas, star of the one line Oxford University official obituary, died a year later in 1829.

  It seems that Oxford University was not prepared to end the grudge with Sadler just because he had died. In spite of being one of Britain’s brightest stars, Sadler only received one long paragraph for his obituary in Jackson’s Oxford Journal. Sadler had somehow made a powerful enemy, with Oxford University culpable in attempting to downgrade his achievements, though ultimately unsuccessful in its campaign to airbrush him out of history.

  His epitaph had been uttered during his lifetime, when Sir John Coxe Hippisley noted in 1812 that Sadler “has been harshly used. There is not a better chemist or mechanic in the Universe, yet he can hardly speak a word of Grammar.”

  Dr. John Fisher, writing a letter to his friend the celebrated painter John Constable on 31 May 1824, had earlier revealed the whereabouts of a retired Sadler. The letter rather drips with contempt for Sadler’s circumstances as a pensioner in an alms-house lodging. And yet he offsets this somewhat by mentioning his noble achievements. So much for being afforded National Treasure status. The letter the celebrated Hay Wain painter received informed him: