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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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John Gooch. Mussolini and his Generals: The Armed Forces and Fascist Foreign Policy, 1922-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. A big book for a big subject. There's a lot here on strategic debates and policy within the Fascist regime; not just how the military served Italian foreign policy ends in Spain and Abyssinia but also the intellectual responses to the changes in warfare since 1918. So Douhet gets some attention, but Balbo even more so. It's hardly a well-trodden area, at least in English, so I expect to learn a lot from this book.

Craig Stockings, ed. Zombie Myths of Australian Military History. Sydney: New South, 2010. Having enjoyed the sequel, I looked around for a copy of this but it was hard to find. So I grabbed it when I quite randomly found it in one of my regular haunts. This is more focused on the myths Australians like to believe about specific battles and campaigns, a number of which have been discussed here before: Breaker Morant (Craig Wilcox), Gallipoli (Rhys Crawley), HMAS Sydney (Oeter Dennis). Other debunkings include 'Australians broke the Hindenburg Line' (Elizabeth Greenhalgh) and '"There is an idea that the Australian is a born soldier..."' (Stockings). Good stuff.

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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.

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Dover Express and East Kent News, 10 January 1913

A number of newspapers print articles of varying length about the Dover airship mystery today, including the Yeovil Western Gazette, the Exeter Western Times, and the Lichfield Mercury. None of these add any new information about this incident, one being a reprint of an article already published in another newspaper and the other two simply terse summaries. However, the Dover Express and East Kent News (p. 2; above) has a local, and very sceptical, slant, saying the story has caused 'great amusement locally' where the true cause is known:

The noise which one or two people thought was due to an airship's engines was due to the exhaust of Mr. Walker's new motor boat, 'The Sappho.' The engines of this boat at the present time have no silencer, and made a great deal of noise, although no one acquainted with an airship's engine would confuse the two. On Saturday morning, at 5 o'clock, this boat was coming in harbour, and the noise was undoubtedly caused by it.

So that would appear to be that.

The Mercury also has a paragraph about the lights seen lately over the Bristol Channel -- though from the Welsh side this time, not the English one: 'from Dinas Powis between ten and eleven o'clock one evening recently' (p. 7). They were seen 'above Nell's Point, Barry, and Lavernock, two of the most important in the chain of forts which form the Bristol Channel defences'. Two lights were seen, which reminded the (unnamed) observers of 'aceytlene' [sic]:

They were watched for a long time, moving to and fro in the sky above the coast near Lavernock, and after about an hour they moved off in a westerly direction. They are believed to have come from a dirigible airship or an aeroplane, but most probably from the former as they did not appear to move quickly.

The Mercury points out that 'the Bristol Channel forts are of the utmost strategic importance', because 'in the event of an outbreak of war, the chief coal shipping ports must rely [upon them] for defence against a sudden raid from a foreign Power'. Ominous.