Post-blogging the 1913 scareships

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Liverpool Echo, 22 February 1913, 4

The Liverpool Echo provides some additional information about the Scarborough airship reported yesterday (p. 4; above). It turns out that it was actually seen 'either once or twice in the early part of the present month' [February 1913], so why it has only come to light now is unclear. According to the Echo, Miss Hollings

reports that while in Stepney-road, some time after nightfall, she heard a noise of machinery in the air in the direction of the racecourse ahead. Looking up she saw what first appeared to be a bright star. A few minutes later from near this light there streamed down a steady, conical stream of white light, playing hither and thither over the racecourse. It continued for several minutes off and on, and then disappeared.

The other witness named in the previous report is not mentioned.

Frank Goddard, of Church Farm, Charlton Musgrove, Somerset, has written in to the Daily Express to report another mystery airship (p. 6):

"This morning [18 February 1913], at about five o'clock, I and two of my men saw an airship appear in the east and sail away to the north-west as if making for the coast.

"It was lighted up and went very fast when going out of sight, but at one time it seemed quite stationary.

"May this not be the same mysterious aircraft that has been seen on several occasions before?"

Both these reports are circumspect with respect to the question of origins, not leading the reader to one conclusion or another.

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Evening Telegraph, 20 February 1913, 4

Although phantom airships have often been in the news lately, none have actually been reported for more than a week. The Dundee Evening Telegraph and Post breaks the drought today with a sighting from Scarborough, on the coast of the North Riding of Yorkshire (p. 4; above). No date is given, unfortunately. At least two people saw it near the racecourse, 'Mr C. T. Taylor, who holds a managerial position in connection with a firm of grocers', and 'Miss Hollings, daughter of Dr Hollings, whose attention was first attracted by the sound of machinery':

The airship showed flashlights for about seven minutes, went away, returned, and showed them for another five minutes, after which it went north.

Mr Taylor thought at first, when the headlight alone was visible, that it was a bright star, but when it began to move naturally his interest was greatly awakened, the more so when he saw the flashlights.

Unusually, the Telegraph seems to imply that the Royal Navy was responsible:

Naval authorities have paid a great deal of attention to the East coast recently, and much manœuvring has been carried out in the vicinity of Scarborough.

The paper's liberal politics perhaps accounts for this lack of alarm about the mystery airship.
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Daily Mirror, 17 February 1913, 5

The Daily Mirror has a curious item today under the headline 'BRITAIN'S PERIL IN THE AIR' (p. 5; above). It is apparently a statement made yesterday by an unidentified 'famous naval tactician', but instead of setting it out as an article or a letter to the editor it is given as an extended quotation with no gloss apart from the hint about the person's identity. Even if it is from an interview, it's an unusual way of doing things.
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Daily Mail, 15 February 1913, 5

The Aerial Navigation Bill, introduced into the House of Commons only a week ago, is now the Aerial Navigation Act, 1913, as the Daily Mail records (p. 5; above):

The Aerial Navigation Bill received the Royal Assent yesterday and comes into operation at once. Foreign airships will now cross England at their peril unless their pilots declare the objects of their journey. Should pilots pass over forts, royal dockyards, or arsenals they are liable to be shot at and killed.

The terms of the new Act will be communicated at once to foreign Governments, also the regulations to be made by the War Office. Aircraft passing prohibited places will be warned by smoke signals before they are fired at. Rockets or flash lights will be used at night.

The Standard's parliamentary reporter, John Foster Fraser, reports the granting of the Royal Assent in picturesque terms (p. 6):

A pleasant interlude in the shape of a call to the House of Lords broke the rather drab current of the Commons' proceedings. The faithful Commons were called to the House of Peers to hear the reading of a broad, cracking sheet of vellum announcing that the King, under the Great Seal, had commissioned a group of peers to signify the royal assent to a little batch of Bills. So, in solemn ceremonial, the Aerial Navigation Act, with its power to authorise the shooting of aeroplane fly-by-nights, became the law of the land.

As this kind of pomp and ceremony presumably happens on a regular basis, it's difficult to see why it needs to be recounted with this level of detail. Perhaps it's a slow news day.
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Daily Herald, 14 February 1913, 6

Yesterday, the Daily Mail said that the Aerial Navigation Bill would be put before the Lords next week. In fact, as today's issue reveals, the bill already 'passed through all its stages in the House of Lords late last night' (p. 5). Moreover, 'all the regulations for the enforcement of the Government's Aerial Navigation Bill [...] have already been drawn up by the Home Office, with the assistance of War Office experts'.

In view of recent circumstances, everything has been hurried forward so that there will not be the least hitch or delay in enforcing the Act, which gives power to the authorities to shoot at sight at any aircraft coming from places outside the United Kingdom whose pilot fails to respond to certain signals. Pilots anxious to sail over our harbours and naval bases will be subject to the most stringent regulations.

The same article also discusses the mystery airships:

We are able to state that in the case of the airship which was reported by The Daily Mail to have been seen sailing above Sheerness on October 14, the authorities have satisfactory proof that this was not one of our own airships but one belonging to a foreign country.

The nature of this proof is not explained, nor is the identity of the airship its origin stated. No reference is made to the claim -- assumed to be officially inspired -- in The Times a month ago that there was reason to believe that the airship responsible was the German civilian airship Hansa. But it seems like this is new information, because that previous report also blamed Hansa for the Dover sighting, whereas the Mail says 'Nothing is certain in regard to the other reported flights'. However, given this 'conclusive proof of the visit of a foreign airship to Sheerness the other reports are naturally considered in a very grave light' (pp. 5-6).

The Mail further reports that, according to the War Office, 'special guns capable of firing at aircraft within a reasonable height are already mounted at various points round the coast' (p. 6). Again, yesterday it had merely said that this would happen at some unspecified point in the future. So things are speeding up.
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Daily Mail, 13 February 1913, 5

The Aeroplane today suggests that 'The visits of the various "scare-ships" have evidently not been without salutary effect', if they have given rise to the present Aerial Navigation Bill (p. 162). The Daily Mail would tend to agree, but hopes for more. It devotes both its first leading article and nearly a column's worth of articles on the opposite page to the bill and to the mystery airship danger (much of which are reprinted in the Dublin Irish Independent, p. 6, and the Dundee Evening Telegraph, p. 4). To take the Mail's reportage first (p. 5; above):

The Government has awakened to the fact that foreign airships have several times recently appeared over England. The result is that a Government Bill is now being rushed through Parliament to meet the danger.

The operative word here is 'rushed'. The bill was introduced into the House of Commons only on Friday (according to the Mail, but Hansard says Saturday; the text seems to have been published on Friday), but

will be the law of the land before many days have passed. Read for the second time on Monday, its remaining stages in the Commons were passed in a single session. During Tuesday's session it was, in the terse language of the orders of the day, considered in Committee, and reported, without amendment; read the third time, and passed. The Bill will be taken in the House of Lords early next week.

There was practically no discussion in the Commons. The proceedings took place after midnight in the sessions both of Monday and Tuesday [...] Thus a Bill of considerable importance to national defence has been hurried through with hardly a word of discussion. The Opposition were asked, and agreed, not to delay the Bill in any way.

Colonel Seely is reported to have told the Commons that the bill 'is not aimed at the aircraft of any foreign Power, but rather at preventing mischievous persons -- possibly from over-sea [sic] -- from hovering over places where there are combustible stores, to the great inconvenience of the people of this country'. This would not seem to explain the haste with which it has been conducted through to the Lords, unless the scareships are taken in account:

The reasons for this urgency are to be found in the frequent reports published in The Daily Mail, of the appearance of unknown airships over various parts of England.

(Though in fact the reports have not been nearly so frequent in the Mail as they have been in the Standard or the Express.) There then follows a summary of the Sheerness incident from last October (which was thoroughly investigated by the Mail) and eight sentences from yesterday's Times on the more recent airship visits and their presumably unfriendly purpose. The Mail then concludes by revealing that

It is understood that the 'sky guns' for firing at aircraft for which contracts were given some time ago will be stationed round the coast for the purpose of carrying out the new regulations.

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The Times, 12 February, 7

The Times hasn't been ignoring the phantom airships, but neither has it focused its editorial attention on them -- until now. The third leading article in today's issue is in support of the government's new Aerial Navigation Bill, arguing that 'This strengthening of existing legislative powers can hardly be thought premature, and may indeed be regarded as somewhat belated' (p. 7; above). The Times thinks the mystery airships are real, and it also thinks they are hostile.

It must have occurred to many people that the visits of foreign airships are becoming unpleasantly frequent, especially in view of the fact that we have no means of returning the compliment. They have a way of appearing over our ports just after nightfall or before dawn, coming no one knows whence and going no one knows whither. It would seem that either they have a predilection in favour of following our coastline, or they pass unnoticed, possibly at a greater height, across our territory. During the last four or five months they have been seen over Sheerness, Portsmouth, Dover, Liverpool, and on two separate occasions over Cardiff. Their course has never been traced. They are sighted at a given spot and then they disappear. That circumstance not only gives a surreptitious air to their visits, but raises an unpleasant suspicion that these visits may be more frequent than we know.

It then goes on to explain the threat posed by these mystery airships:

This aerial espionage of unknown extent and minuteness is an intrusion which we have a right to resent. Its motives are not likely to be friendly, nor can we flatter ourselves that the beauty of a bird's-eye view of our ports is so great as to lead foreigners to spend so much money in order to derive æsthetic gratification from it. Airships are already capable of being used to do a great deal of mischief, and their powers in this respect will certainly be extended. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the possibility of using such powers has entered into the calculations of some foreign country, it is obvious that this reconnoitring in time of peace might be found of great utility should an occasion arise.

The Times rejects the notion that there exists a freedom of the air as there does a freedom of the seas: 'The analogy of the sea is no analogy at all. A ship on the high seas cannot drop explosives into our arsenals, but an aircraft can'. Moreover, even on the high seas every ship 'has to display her name and to carry papers showing her movements, her registry, her nationality, and so forth. There is no analogy between ships and these aerial visitors to our ports'.

Our sovereignty goes up to the sky and down to the centre. In the past it has not been necessary to say so because no one had the means to challenge our dominion or to invade our atmosphere without first conquering our soil. The means of attacking us through and by the air now exist. It is therefore our business to define our rights and to make it plain that the air above us is our own, subject, like our soil and our territorial waters, to whatever municipal regulations we find it expedient to make.

And not only is legislation along the lines of the Aerial Navigation Bill necessary, but 'we also need an aerial police to enforce our regulations, in addition to whatever means we already possess'.
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Daily Mail, 11 February 1913, 3

There is little overt mention of phantom airships in today's newspapers, but quite a few allusions. They all accompany the news, published in all the major papers, that last night the Secretary for War, Colonel Seely, introduced to the House of Commons an Aerial Navigation Bill to amend the 1911 Aerial Navigation Act. The bill would enable, in the words of the Daily Mail (p. 3; above), 'the restriction, if necessary, of flights by foreign aircraft over this country':

The Bill gives a Secretary of State powers to prohibit aircraft from flying over prescribed areas, which may include the whole of the coast-line and the 'territorial waters (i.e. within three miles of the coast) adjacent thereto.'

If an aircraft flies over a prescribed area or fails to comply with the landing conditions a signal shall be given by 'the officer designated for the purpose.' Then if the aircraft still fails to comply 'it shall be lawful for the officer to fire at or into such aircraft and to use any and every other means necessary to compel compliance.'

As it stands, the 1911 Act provides only for a £200 fine or imprisonment for 6 months (or both) for aviators caught flying over a prohibited area. Therefore, if passed, the Aerial Navigation Bill will for the first time give the government the legal basis for air defence.
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Any provincial newspaper with pretensions to quality features a regular column from its (usually anonymous) London correspondent which offers a mixture of political gossip and analysis as well as anecdotes of life in the capital and other, less classifiable tidbits. Today's 'Our London correspondence' column in the Manchester Guardian, for example, previews the coming week in Parliament, analyses religious demographics in Londonderry, and discusses the 'new terror' of taxi whistles on London streets (p. 6). It also has two paragraphs on 'The mysterious airship', based on a conversation with 'a friend who watches the progress of aeronautics very closely'. It seems that

people of his sort are inclined to take the reports of the airship that travels by night seriously, and to hold that, though two or three of them (I am afraid the Manchester report is one) seem to be the product of self-deception, there is now a strong enough body of evidence to make it reasonably certain that in the course of the last two months an airship travelling by night has been seen at Sheppey, at Dover, and at different points on the Welsh coast of the Bristol Channel.

The Guardian's correspondent seems to doubt the claim that the Dover airship was the privately-owned Hansa: 'but I believe this theory was arrived at by a process of elimination, the movements of the German Government airships having been traced on the night in question'. As to 'the theory in Wales [...] that the vessel belongs to some experimenter living on the Devonshire moors',

It seems important to observe that the direction in which the 'mystery' vessel was moving and the places at which it was seen would point even more cogently to experiments conducted from Salisbury Plain. It may be added that, though a private experimenter who only flew at night would be a lunatic, there might be a very definite purpose in keeping quiet by day if the experimenter were a Government department. I learn from my friend that there is much comment on the darkness which has fallen on the Government's experiments in regard to dirigibles of the rigid type since the unfortunate accident to the naval airship No. 1 at Barrow two years ago. This year's Estimates will probably contain provision for new and slightly smaller vessels of this type. Is it possible that something has been accomplished already?

This is in line with earlier, vaguer hints in the Guardian that government or government-commissioned airships might have been responsible for the South Wales sightings, but the definite suggestion that it is a secret new government (presumably military) airship operating from Salisbury Plain appears to be new.

There follows a brief recollection of the 1909 airship scare, under the heading 'A precedent for sceptics':

Sceptics may comfort themselves by remembering that it was in South Wales not so very long ago that chance and the romantic imagination of a nocturnal wanderer combined to perpetrate the great airship hoax. The wanderer told the story, and chance produced the little tag printed in French which, when first translated, seemed to refer obscurely to shrapnel shell, but was ultimately found to be a very lucid piece of instruction in the use of motor-tyre valves. Such as the inferences to which the technical terms of a foreign tongue may lead the imagination.

A striking phrase that, 'the great airship hoax'. However, while this account is accurate as far as it goes, it is misleading in its implication that C. Lethbridge's strange encounter on Caerphilly Mountain was the cause of the scare, when it actually came at the peak, after a build-up of a week or more. It was more the cause of the end of the scare, as the sudden deflation of the sensational story contributed to a more general scepticism about the phantom airships.

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Liverpool Echo, 8 February 1913, 6

Two new airship reports today. First, from the Liverpool Echo (p. 6, above):

Between eight and half-past eight last night [7 February 1913] at least a dozen people in London-road, Northwich, observed a bright light in the sky, and were emphatically convinced that it proceeded from an airship. Rays seemed distinctly to emanate from the light, which shifted its position and shone steadily for possibly two minutes. It was observed later at an even higher altitude and smaller in size, the rays being still discernible. The light was intermittent and apparently shifting.

The airship disappeared in the direction of Crewe. It was at a great height, and no outline of the ship was observed. The gale was blowing at the time.

Second, from the Norfolk News (p. 11):

The sight of three aeroplanes was reported from Sheringham on Friday [7 February 1913]. From what we have ascertained, a lady living on the Beeston Hills, looking inland over Hook's Hill, to the back of the town, about six o'clock, saw first one, then a second, and near-by a third aeroplane, going in a westerly direction. From one a red light was flashed over the town. Another lady who was walking in High Street about the same hour noticed a brilliant light from above.

Another paragraph notes the results of 'Further enquiries':

Several residents confirm the truth of the report; and an ex-Army officer observed the last one through his [field] glasses. It now appears that they returned about midnight, and one gentleman distinctly heard them at that hour.

These reports have some unique features. The Northwich sighting took place in the teeth of a gale which caused havoc around Liverpool that night, not the best time to be taking a voyage in an airship. (Though it should be noted that the wind was blowing 'half a gale' during the Dover incident a month ago.) And the Sheringham sighting was of not one but three airships (or aeroplanes); hitherto the fly-by-nights have always been solitary.