Post-blogging the 1913 scareships

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Norfolk News, 25 January 1913, 10

The Norfolk News, Eastern Counties Journal, and Norwich, Yarmouth, and Lynn Commercial Gazette, presumably universally known as the Norfolk News, today carries the usual paragraph about the Cardiff airship sighting. Unsurprisingly, it pays considerably more attention to the mystery aircraft heard locally at Yarmouth at midnight last week (above, p. 10). It reproduces Herbert Pertwee's letter to the rival Eastern Daily Press:

On Tuesday, January 14th, about midnight, I distinctly heard an aeroplane or airship pass over my house at a tremendous speed, and within three or four minutes after I heard it again, probably returning. I should like to know if anyone else heard it. Early on the previous Monday morning Mr. Walter Back heard one over Southtown. What are the Germans up to?

Note that the previous report had given the date as 15 January, not 14 January, but this discrepancy is easily explained by the time being midnight. Pertwee was interviewed by a representative of the press (what part of the press is not specified, so probably the Daily Press):

he noticed that the aeroplane had a very high-toned hum. There was no sound earthward at the time, all of it coming from above. The sound came towards him, passed away, and then returned, the airship apparently travelling at a very great speed. It was between midnight and 1 a.m. when he heard it over his house. His partner, Mr. Back, had mentioned to his son hearing a similar sound on the previous Monday morning [13 January 1913] before he met Mr. Pertwee. Mr. Back heard the sound between 2 and 3 a.m., and thought it might have come from a hydroplane. If it was anything of the sort Mr. Pertwee thinks it must have come from a considerable distance, otherwise if it had been in this district something must have been known of its movements.

The Norfolk News notes that after Pertwee's letter appeared in the Daily Press, 'several residents' have told its Yarmouth correspondent that 'they heard what they took to be an aeroplane pass over Yarmouth at about Tuesday midnight (14th instant)'. But it doesn't quote or name any of these other witnesses, instead reprinting another letter evidently from the Daily Press, written by 'Mr. F. W. Boulton, 20, Gordon Road, Southtown' relating to an incident a couple of months ago (so a few weeks after the Sheerness airship but maybe around the time it reached the press):

I was greatly interested on reading your report in this morning's issue of a supposed airship or aeroplane passing over Yarmouth, about the middle of November last [1912] I heard what I took to be an airship pass over Southtown. The time was about half an hour after midnight, and both my wife and myself distinctly heard a loud whirring, humming noise, which gradually diminished as though receding into the distance. As the time was about the middle of our herring fishing, it struck me on second thoughts that the noises might have come from a vessel in the harbour, although it appeared to be overhead, and became fainter and fainter as if getting further and further away. As I found nobody else seemed to have noticed the incident, after a bit I dismissed it from my mind, only to have it brought back afresh by reading Mr. Pertwee's communication in this morning's paper.

Both Pertwee and Boulton have used their local knowledge and contacts to assess what they heard. Pertwee seems to have inquired about local aircraft flights, or perhaps just assumed he would have heard of any. He and his business partner shared their experiences, and Pertwee took the initiative to write to a newspaper and ask if anyone else heard it as well. Clearly the sound, whatever it was, became the subject of gossip and rumour, with a number of people telling a reporter from another paper they had heard it too. Boulton also asked around, but finding that he and his wife were the only ones to notice anything decided not to worry about it. His thought that the sound might come from a herring trawler is reminiscent of the Dover Express's explanation for the Dover airship, though presumably it would be quite a familiar sound in a fishing port. None of the witnesses suggest that they have any familiarity with aircraft, but they seem reasonably confident in their ability to identify one by its sound -- well, it came from above, so what else could it be? Since Pertwee has inferred that the aircraft was not a local one, and given that it was flying in the middle of the night, to conclude that it was a German airship might be reasonable, though not a German aeroplane as he apparently has done. It's curious that none of the witnesses seem to have rushed outside to see if anything was visible, but perhaps the lateness of the hour explains that.

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Only recycled news today: the Yeovil Western Gazette, p. 2, and the Cambridge Independent Press, p. 5, reprint the paragraph about the Cardiff airship which circulated widely on Tuesday, while the Exeter Western Times, p. 11, reprints its own article on the Bristol lights from yesterday.

The Standard has a follow-up to the letter about lights in India it published over a week ago. A correspondence seems to have developed. Lewis Rice of Harrow writes in response to a Colonel Tillard's account (unseen) of 'the Nundy lights', 'the lights which are seen from the fine old fortress of Nundydroog in the Mysore State', p. 13:

After the first heavy fall of rain in the storms which precede the burst of the monsoon, these lights appear in the plains below, often stretching out in long lines like the street lamps of a city. The superstitious call them 'corpse candles' and other names. But they can be accounted for in a very matter-of-fact way.

Rice explains that the lights appear during the mating (or 'pairing') season of a species of termite, though these are not their direct cause. Rather it seems that the termites are a local delicacy, and it's the method used to trap them which is the explanation:

The lower orders of the villagers are not behindhand in their appreciation of the delicate morsels, and, in order to gratify their taste, form shallow basins of the earth round the white ant nests, in which they fix a branch of inferior sugar-cane and set it alight. The insects, allured by the light, fall in shoals into the basins, where they are retained by a sort of hencoop. In the morning the fragrant heaps are gathered up and roasted, to be eaten as curry. Such is the explanation of the Nundy lights.

Perhaps, though termite traps are probably not the solution to the present British airship mystery.

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Manchester Guardian, 23 January 1913, 12

Not a lot of new scareship news today. The Cardiff airship seen last Friday remains the principal focus. The Dundee Evening News reprints, p. 5, the same article about further witnesses carried by a number of newspapers yesterday, so that's nothing new. The Manchester Guardian says, p. 12 (above) that 'the noise of its propellers has been heard at night in several districts', which is new, but no details are provided.

Of greater interest are the interviews which 'Mr. E. T. Willows, the well-known Cardiff airman' has been giving to the press, or at least to representatives of the Guardian and the Standard, suggesting that 'the "long, oval shape" referred to by one or two observers suggests that it may have been a dirigible balloon'. The way in which these interviews are framed is quite revealing. The Guardian is a Radical paper and so congenitally predisposed to scepticism about talk of spies and invasions. As well, it is broadly in political sympathy with the Liberal government now in power and therefore disinclined to support any charge that it is failing in its duty to defend the nation. Conversely the Standard is robustly Conservative in its views and regularly runs articles about this or that foreign menace (a word which the Guardian is apt to put in scare quotes). Just today it has the fourth in a series of articles on 'The Navy and the nation' attacking Churchill's naval policy, along with a supporting leading article.
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Standard, 22 January 1913, 9

Captain Lindsay's appeal for other witnesses to the airship he saw at Cardiff has not been in vain. A number of newspapers today print the same brief paragraph noting the existence of 'other eye-witnesses' (not named) -- the syndicalist Daily Herald, p. 7; Dundee Courier, p. 6; Liverpool Echo, p. 5; Manchester Courier, p. 10; and Standard, p. 9 (above); while The Times, p. 10, has an even more abbreviated version -- which adds:

After leaving Cardiff the course of the airship was altered from due west to north-west. It is said to have carried a light and travelled so fast that when one observer ran to a telephone the airship had almost disappeared.

Fortunately, the Globe provides some more substantial details (p. 5):

Mr. Stephen Morgan, of Merthyr, states that he saw 'something resembling an airship' about 6 p.m. on Friday [17 January 1913], that it carried a light, and that it left a column of smoke in its wake.

Mr. E. Morgan, of Roath, Cardiff, states that when he saw the ship the light was too dim to see its lines clearly, but that it appeared to be 'oval-shaped.'

In addition, 'It is declared' (by whom?) 'that a fortnight ago an airship was seen at night over Barry Dock'.

The Globe also reports two new mystery aircraft sightings (or hearings):

The 'Eastern Daily Press' publishes a statement by Mr. Herbert A. Pertwee, of 104, North Denes-road, Yarmouth, that between midnight and 1 a.m. on January 15 he heard an airship or aeroplane pass over his house, return, then fade away. The Wolverhampton 'Express and Star' states that several people at Hednesford saw an airship bearing a light at 7.30 p.m. on Sunday last [19 January 1913].

Yarmouth is on the Norfolk coast, facing Germany across the North Sea; but Hednesford is in Staffordshire in deepest England, the first report to come from inland.
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Standard, 21 January 1913, p. 9

Press coverage of the phantom airships has so far been somewhat scattershot, with articles in only two or three newspapers on any given day. Today, however, at least eight newspapers report on an airship seen at Cardiff, five of them London dailies (all politically conservative, as it happens) -- though admittedly it is not given much attention. The Daily Express (p. 5), Liverpool Echo (p. 5), Manchester Courier (p. 7) and The Times (p. 10) have only a short paragraph or two, while the Globe and Traveller (p. 6), Daily Mail (p. 9) and the Dundee Evening Telegraph and Post (p. 4) provide a bit more information. The longest account is in the Standard (p. 9, above).

The reason for the interest appears to be the quality of the witness, Captain Lionel Lindsay, the Chief Constable of Glamorganshire and hence the senior policeman for the area of South Wales bounded more or less by Cardiff, Swansea and Merthyr (he most recently attracted national attention for his role in the Tonypandy Riots). In his own words (said 'in an interview', according to the Standard):

At a quarter to five on Friday [17 January 1913] evening last I noted the object in the air. It was then dusk and rather foggy, so that one could not define it. It was much bigger and moved faster than the Willows airship, and it left in its trail a dense volume of smoke. I called the attention of a bystander to the object, and he agreed with me that it was some large aircraft. It disappeared quickly, thus giving evidence of speedy movement, and it was taking a direction as if making for Swansea. I have failed to meet with anyone else who saw it, and am anxious to solve what appears to me something like a mystery.

Compared with the previous scareship reports, the smoke trail is a novel feature, and this one seems unusually fast too. For some reason most of the newspapers insist that Lindsay was 'the sole witness', but by his account there was at least one other (though perhaps he cannot be found now). Some add that he has 'notified the public that he will be obliged if [other] observers [...] will communicate with him' (Daily Mail, p. 9) 'at the constabulary office' (Evening Telegraph, p. 4), which could mean that he is making the mystery airship the official business of the Glamorganshire Constabulary. The Evening Telegraph hints that there might be more sightings from the Cardiff area, saying that 'It is reported on reputable authority [presumably Lindsay's] that a mysterious airship is making periodical visits to Glamorgan'. But the Standard, the only paper to explicitly mention other scareship sightings, mentions only the Dover and Bristol Channel ones. As Dinas Powis is also in Glamorganshire, perhaps that explains the 'periodical', though not the certainty of the 'reputable authority'.

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Two columnists in today's issue of Flight mention the airship mystery. Oiseau Bleu ('Bluebird'), the pseudonymous author of 'Eddies', a regular commentary on aviation matters, is 'wondering whether the mysterious Dover "aircraft" after all is found in the suggestion that the noises were due to a motor boat', p. 71. This appears to be the first (if uncredited) use of the local knowledge proffered by the Dover Express on last week.

In that case, where did the bright rapidly moving light come from? Could it have been supplied by imagination? If it indeed were a dirigible, where did it go to, for it is hardly conceivable, since it disappeared inland, that it could have continued its cruise without being noticed by other people.

Despite this scepticism, Oiseau Bleu thinks there's a problem either way:

the mere fact that there is apparently no definite evidence as to which it was goes to prove there is something radically wrong with our coast defence. Searchlights there are in plenty, both at Dover, and, for that matter, at Sheerness, but were they used?

Further down the same page, the other pseudonymous columnist, the appropriately named Will o-the-Wisp, takes a similar line. This column, 'Things we should like to know' is humorous and elliptical in style (example: 'What key is the chord of an aeroplane in. Is it governed by the pitch of the propeller'). The things which they would like to know about the scareships are:

How it is all these phantom airships can fly over fortified towns without being seen.

Have we any searchlights on the coast.

Will it be the same when it's the 'real thing.'

Who says we are not progressing? The War Office have rented one of the hangars at Eastbourne. Now we SHAN'T be long!

There is a critique of the state of Britain's air defences here. Whether the alleged humour adds or detracts from it is hard to say.

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There is nothing about phantom airships in the papers today. However, the Daily Mirror has a very brief note about the strange light seen near Ballybay in Ireland. It adds very little but does say, p.4, that the 'mysterious light [...] is keeping the inhabitants of Ballybay, Co. Monaghan, in their homes at night-time as they believe it to be some uncanny manifestation'. This makes it quite clear that the lights, whatever they may be, are being interpreted as something supernatural, not technological.

There is also a letter from A. H. Tulloch of Eastbourne to the editor of the Standard which refers, p. 13, to an article appearing in a previous issue. It's not clear what that article was about but it was entitled 'Moving lights' and mentioned 'St Elmo's Fire'. It might have been about the Ballybay light, or it might have been about the Bristol Channel lights, or something else. At any rate Tulloch's letter is not itself about any scareships but rather a strange phenomenon he himself witnessed 'on the banks of the Mahanuddy, Orissa, India' (when is not said):

The light in question had nothing 'flickering' about it, nor was there a flash of any kind; it had the appearance of a remarkably large and bright lantern, and moved with a slight swaying motion, just as if it was, indeed, one being carried by hand. We saw two of these lights approach and pass each other upon the bund above the river, at a distance from about seventy yards from us, and when the one that was coming toward us drew near, sure enough it did turn out to be a man with a lantern. Asked if anyone carrying a light had passed him on the pathway he said 'No.' Whereupon we climbed up the bund and followed the light, which still kept ahead with the same little swinging movement. Suddenly it floated off the bund, smoothly but very swiftly, right across the open country to a grove of trees half a mile away, where it danced up and down vigorously. An hour later it was still dancing.

Tulloch adds that 'The mail runners' called the phenomenon '"fire ghosts," and told tales of having been chased by them across the sand of the river bed'. The same lights were also 'frequently seen on the banks of the Mahanuddy outside the station of Cuttack, on a bit of ground used as a burning ghat'.

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Devon and Exeter Gazette, 14 January 1913, 11

The Devon and Exeter Gazette today reprints The Times's paragraph from yesterday suggesting that the Hansa was responsible for the airship sightings at Sheerness and Dover. It also adds, p. 11, an interpretative gloss from the Globe on this 'matter which has already attracted considerable public attention, has been the subject of several questions in the House, and remains still to be satisfactorily explained'.

It will be noticed, comments the Globe, that now, for the first time, the two separate incidents of the 'ships (of the air) that pass in the night' are associated.

The implication here seems to be that it's the first time the Sheerness and Dover sightings have been officially 'associated', because otherwise it's hard to see what the significance of this is. This is perhaps supported by the statement that the paragraph was written by 'the writer of the Times political notes' (which, looking at it again, could be the case), which perhaps suggests a Westminster or Whitehall source. The Globe believes the reality of the Sheerness airship ('the mysterious "fly by night"') has been 'established beyond all doubt, since the evidence was vouched for by the expert observers of the Eastchurch flying ground'. As well,

Questioned in the House, Mr. Churchill at first was disposed to regard the matter as a canard, but eventually he admitted that an airship had undoubtedly passed over Sheerness, that it was definitely known not to be an English machine, and that nothing could be said as to its actual identity.

Of the 'Dover incident', the Globe says merely that it 'attracted less attention, and the "moving light" going at great speed and the sounds of an aerial motor were only noticed by a few people' due to the lateness of the hour.

Not every strange light or sound these days is interpreted as a phantom airship. This item appears, p. 6, in the Irish Times today, along with other brief notices from Ulster:

Another 'Mysterious' Light Near Ballybay. -- Apropos of the interest created in the mysterious lights recently seen on Lough Erne there is another story as to strange lights alleged to have been seen by several people at Garryduff, near Ballybay. People who have been travelling late in the district say the light is as brilliant as the moon, and travels like lightning along a marshy hollow, and is accompanied by a weird sound. It is stated that people who have seen this extraordinary light were afraid to pass through the locality, and put up in neighbours' houses for the night.

This sounds like a more traditional phantom, a will'o-the-wisp. There is no suggestion that anyone, even the writer, connects it with the airships being seen elsewhere. This could be because the light was seen travelling close to the ground rather than in the air. It could also be that people in this part of Ireland just don't think of airships as an explanation for something that needs explaining -- though they do elsewhere in the country.

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Daily Express, 13 January 1913, 6

The Daily Express today features, p. 6, an article with the title 'Air ships and scare ships', written by C. G. Grey, editor of The Aeroplane. Grey has been given a full column immediately following the leading articles to make his case that whatever else they may be, the phantom airships are good news. He begins by briefly noting the various 'weird nocturnal sightings in the sky' to date: 'That little trip of the Zeppelin's over Sheerness started it', followed by 'Strange lights and noises over the Firth of Forth', 'the Bristol Channel' and 'along the east coast'. Then 'One of our own tiny airboatlets' was seen at Portsmouth (a reference to an unexpected visit by the Army airship Beta II in December), and now the Dover incident. Grey thinks that 'quite possibly [...] the same vessel' was responsible for all of these sightings, though he does think the report that 'the machine at Dover' (perhaps he means the Bristol Channel) 'carried an acetylene searchlight is probably the result of a vivid imagination, for one does not play with an acetylene flame in the immediate neighbourhood of some thousands of cubic feet of highly inflammable gas'. A fair point, really.
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Irish Times, 11 January 1913, 9

The Dublin Irish Times has a report (p. 9; above) of a 'mysterious airship' seen on last Wednesday, 8 January 1913, at Newport, Co. Mayo, on the northwest coast of Ireland. It was first seen at 6.40pm to the southwest, and looked 'at first' like 'a very large, bright star'. It shortly 'was seen to move slightly to and fro, and at times was surrounded by a kind of luminous haze, such as is formed when strong light falls on smoke or vapour'.

It then occurred to those who were watching it that the light belonged to some airship, probably a dirigible, and that the haze was caused by vapour from the engine being blown across the path of the light. It seemed as if the airship was trying to approach the lights of the town, but was unable to do so owing to the strong easterly wind that was blowing. Many recalled the airship that was said to have flown over Sheerness some time ago, and the word 'Germans' was heard pretty often.

The light seemed to be 'about two miles distant, over the sea, and at an elevation of between 500 and 1,000 feet'. Some people 'affirmed that they distinctly heard the whirr of propellers'. It remained visible in 'nearly the same position' for about an hour, 'seemingly struggling against the wind, and considerable excitement prevailed among the crowd of onlookers'. At 7.50pm 'the airmen seemed to have abandoned the attempt to reach Newport in the face of the wind', because the light 'suddenly' moved southwest and then disappeared. Two or three policemen were among the witnesses, having been alerted shortly after the airship was first seen; after it had gone Sergeant Padian, RIC, telegraphed 'the police of Westport, etc.' to look out for it but without result. Since 'the easterly wind increased to a gale during the night, it was thought that they [the airmen] had been blown out to sea'.

Flight has taken notice of the airship seen at Dover, though it's almost the last item in today's issue, tucked in with a few miscellaneous announcements between the letters column and the subscription rates on p. 52:

YET again the throb of an aerial motor and the whirr of a propeller has been heard during the hours when most worthy citizens are abed. This time the mysterious aircraft was heard at Dover at 5 a.m. on the 5th inst., but it was not unlikely an aviator from a flying ground, not a hundred miles from Dover, out for a very early spin. No doubt if aviation progresses as rapidly in the future as it has done in the past it will not be long before episodes such as this will be deemed just in the day's or night's events.

The first and least interesting thing to note here is that the date is given as 5 January, when most accounts have 4 January. The second and almost as uninteresting thing is the allusion to a previous sighting(s). This would seem to be a reference to the Sheerness Incident, except that took place in the early evening, not 'during the hours when most worthy citizens are abed'. The third and most interesting thing is that like the Dover Express, Flight thinks there is nothing in this sighting, though it pins the blame on a British aeroplane rather than a British motorboat. However both explanations rely on the general unfamiliarity of the public with aircraft. On the other hand, the Newport sighting, with the inference drawn by onlookers that the light from the airship was being seen through the exhaust from the engine, seems to suggest that people knew what to expect when looking at aircraft in flight; or rather that they thought they knew.

Otherwise the only other phantom airship mention today is a tiny summary of the Dover sighting in the Tamworth Herald, p. 5.