The Dundee Courier today has a long article providing more details of the airship seen by Captain Lundie and the crew the City of Leeds off Grimsby -- 'It was travelling at a fast rate, and somewhat resembled a shark in shape' (p. 5) -- and the Daily Express has an even longer, more reflective piece. Its 'Special Correspondent' makes the case that this is 'The most convincing proof so far of the truth hidden behind the clouds of rumours of the flights of unknown airships over the North Sea and the east coast' more persuasively than previous attempts, though still hardly conclusively (p. 5; above). Captain Boothby, the assistant marine superintendent at Grimsby who was the recipient of Lundie's original report, believes 'that the statement could certainly be confirmed beyond any doubt':
'That it was an airship -- a cigar-shaped dirigible of large size that Captain Lundie saw, I also am certain,' continued Captain Boothby. 'He had ample opportunity for seeing it, and his experience would prevent him mistaking anything else for an airship.
This 'experience' appears to be Lundie's (doubtless many) years at sea; there is no suggestion that he is in any way familiar with airships or aeroplanes. And while other members of the crew did see it -- among them Second Officer Williams and the ship's cook, who describes seeing 'a dark shape floating by high in the moonlight' -- it is Lundie's 'precise, carefully detailed, statement' alone that represents 'evidence that can hardly be doubted, and the importance of which, once it is admitted to be true, cannot be easily over-estimated':
It proves that under all the wild rumours of 'scareships,' of practical jokes with fire-balloons, and the tales of untrained or imaginative gazers by night who mistake fiery stars for dirigibles' 'flashing searchlights,' there is a solid foundation for the fears of an airship invasion, which all expert airmen agree will very soon be not only quite possible, but extremely probable.
The Express's correspondent spent the weekend touring 'the Yorkshire coast from Withernsea round the sweep of Bridlington Bay to breezy, hilly Scarborough' (all places where phantom airships have been seen), 'the stretch which may be one of the widest "open doors" of England when aerial progress makes Great Britain an island no longer'.
All round the coast and in the great ports of Hull and Grimsby, as well as in the scattered villages and fashionable seaside resorts I have heard stories of the airship, but behind the light jests and the half doubting guise in which the many wildly improbable stories were recounted, there was apparent a feeling that those mysterious airships might be in some cases a reality -- a reality to be dreaded and proved against at any cost. The fear that flies by night is over Yorkshire.