What did the phantom airships mean to people at the time?

One thing is clear. The press very early on referred to the mysterious lights as airships, and it does seem that this was probably the most popular theory among those who saw them. But it was very far from a universal view. The 5 September 1909 sighting in Fremantle gives some idea of this. The account given in the Perth Western Mail on 11 September appears to be a first-hand description of the conversation between a number of eyewitnesses, arguing over what it is. (The tone is certainly one of amusement, but it doesn't seem to be made up.)

A Strange Luminary. -- "There's the airship! Who's a liar now, eh?" As he made the remark an excitable old gentleman waved his hands towards the sky, and in a little while some twenty persons were standing in Market-street, Fremantle, on Monday, shortly before 10 p.m. gazing interestedly heavenwards. The star was apparently undergoing a bewildering series of changes. From shining with great brilliancy it would suddenly grow dim and indistinct, only to shine strongly again in a few seconds. At times its light was completely lost for four or five seconds, 'It's caused by clouds passing over it," was the dictum of one of the bystanders, whose opinion was met with the retort, "Then why don't the other stars show the same variation?" "It's Mars nearing its period of occultation," observed a gentleman who subsequently expressed his indignation at this solution of the celestial phenomenon advanced by two elderly ladies. "It's my opinion," remarked one of the latter, with the warm approval of the other, "that things are getting too strong on this earth, and that light is placed in the sky as a warning to the world." This portentous theory did not receive the approval of the bystanders, who went their ways perplexed by the pranks of the planet whose light shone intermittently as if in mockery of the watchers below.

So the writer describes it as a 'star' or a 'planet'; the first person to remark upon it called it 'the airship'; another man specifies it as Mars (presumably meaning opposition instead of 'occultation'), and two women advance an apparently religious interpretation.
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The first Australian scareship to be reported was not described as an airship, but simply as 'beautiful revolving lights', albeit of a mechanical aspect. This was published in the Melbourne Argus of 9 August 1909. Reverend B. Cozens, of the Port Melbourne Seamen's Mission, came into the newspaper's office to make a statement about something he had seen from a farm at Eltham Kangaroo Ground, to the east of Melbourne, on the previous Saturday night (7 August):

At 10 o'clock on Saturday night my wife and I saw two beautiful revolving lights high up in the air above the Dandenong Range. These lights whirled like the propellers of ships, slowed down, dipped, and rose again, as if they were beating up in a zig-zag course against the wind. They were about six miles apart, and about half a mile in the air over the top of the range. They changed from white to red and then to blue, as if they were revolving beacons with three-coloured slides.

A neighbour, J. Swain (a monumental mason with premises in the City) and his two sons also saw the lights. They watched the lights for two hours, by which time one of the lights had nearly disappeared behind the ranges. Reverend Cozens got up again at 2am and saw the second light had also nearly disappeared in the same place, and also 'five more very dim in the distance, driving up in the track of the ones we had seen':

They seemed to be coming from the lakes along the coast [...] The whole impression of their movements was that of machinery.

Some readers of the Argus immediately wrote in to say they'd seen the same lights on both Friday and Saturday night from North Malvern.
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It's a little-known fact that Australia had a phantom airship scare of its very own. That's mostly due to phantom airships themselves being little-known, on the whole. But the Australian sightings of August-September 1909 were also less numerous and less spectacular than the other waves that preceded it that year, in Britain in May and in New Zealand in July and August. They are still, however, interesting, and the Australian reaction to these visitations differed from that of their imperial cousins.

The Australian press did report on the phantom airships seen flying over Britain and New Zealand, though not in great detail. On 19 May the Sydney Morning Herald said that 'For several weeks a mysterious airship has occasionally been seen over the eastern counties of England, chiefly at night' -- and not much more than that. A few days later, on 22 May, the West Australian told of 'reports of a mysterious balloon having been seen at night time over the east coast' of England, which had been 'confirm[ed]' by policemen and sailors. The subsequent 'solutions' to the mystery were reported more fully, such as the advertising airship found at Dunstable (see, e.g., Adelaide Advertiser, 28 May) and the so-called admission by a Dr M. Boyd that he was the inventor and pilot of the mystery airship (a claim which itself was later -- or earlier, going by the Australian publication date -- debunked). The possible German origin of the mystery airship(s) was stressed in most of these accounts: for example, the West Australian noted that 'The vessel is supposed to be a reconnoitering balloon belonging to the German fleet now manoeuvring in the North Sea'.

The sightings across the Tasman were given a bit more attention, though less context -- it seems nothing was said about where New Zealanders thought the airships might have come from. Several newspapers printed the following story (here taken from the Brisbane Courier for 31 July):

Remarkable stories are coming from the South Island regarding a mysterious light seen at night. The suggestion is that the light is shown by an airship. In some cases it is circumstantially declared that the light appears in the centre of a black body. One observer declares that the airship is shaped like a boat, with a hat top, and was speeding at about 30 miles an hour. An airship has also been seen by about 30 people in the Oamaru district. The most circumstantial report comes from Gore, stating that it was reported that an airship had been seen there for the last four nights, and that last night it was distinguished at 9 o'clock, passing at a great height, and travelling south, with a headlight attached.

About a week later, another, now more dismissive report again circulated in a number of the major dailies:

Circumstantial accounts have been received from different parts of the Dominion of an airship having been seen both day and night.

One informant declares that the occupant of the airship sang out to him in a foreign language.

Generally speaking, the reports, though circumstantial, are not taken too seriously.

In the Sydney Morning Herald of 7 August the above was revealingly entitled 'AERIAL HYSTERIA. NEW ZEALANDER'S [sic] SCARE'. After such a smug headline it is entirely satisfying to note the first reports of true-blue fair-dinkum you-beaut Aussie scareships surfaced just a few days later, which I'll discuss in a following post.