For its first century, ballooning was equal parts science and show business, and it paid its performers in fame and funerals. The first flights of 1783 opened a frontier with no instruments, no weather forecasts and no forgiveness. Here are five stories from that frontier: a showman who lost his trousers over the Channel, the first man to die in flight, Napoleon's favourite aeronaut, a record that stood into the next century, and three Swedes who vanished into the Arctic.
Two men, one Channel, no trousers
On 7 January 1785 Jean-Pierre Blanchard, a French professional aeronaut, and John Jeffries, the American physician funding the trip, lifted off from the cliffs of Dover to attempt the first aerial crossing of the English Channel. Their hydrogen balloon kept sagging toward the waves, so the two men threw out everything they could unfasten: ballast, anchors, the useless wing-like oars, then most of their clothes. Jeffries' own account records that Blanchard's trousers went into the sea. They cleared the French coast and landed in a wood near Guines, inland from Calais, half dressed and wholly famous. The first international flight in history ended in a forest, in January, in underwear.
The first man to die flying
Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, hero of the first manned flight, wanted the Channel in the other direction, from France to England against the prevailing wind. His answer was a hybrid machine: a hydrogen sphere for lift, a hot air section below for control. On 15 June 1785 he launched from near Boulogne-sur-Mer with Pierre Romain. Roughly half an hour in, the balloon suddenly deflated and fell near Wimereux, killing both men. It was aviation's first fatal crash, less than two years after aviation began. The idea itself was sound: modern gas-and-hot-air hybrids are called Rozieres in his honour, and one flew around the world in 1999. They have their own entry among the types of balloons.
Napoleon's aeronaut
Sophie Blanchard, Jean-Pierre's widow, was tiny, timid on the ground and unshakable in the air. She was the first woman to fly professionally, made more than 60 ascents, and Napoleon appointed her Aeronaut of the Official Festivals; after the empire fell, Louis XVIII engaged her too. Her signature act was the night ascent: rising over Paris in a silk gondola scarcely bigger than a chair, setting off fireworks slung beneath her hydrogen balloon. On 6 July 1819, above the Tivoli Gardens, the fireworks ignited leaking gas. The burning balloon dropped onto a roof in the rue de Provence and Blanchard fell to the street, the first woman killed in an aviation accident. Paris paid for her monument by public subscription.
Eighteen hours to another country
By the 1830s the profession had quieter heroes. Charles Green, an Englishman who switched balloons from expensive hydrogen to cheap coal gas, made hundreds of ascents across a long career and kept his passengers alive, which in that era was itself remarkable. On 7 November 1836 he left Vauxhall Gardens in London with Robert Hollond and Thomas Monck Mason aboard the enormous Royal Vauxhall. They crossed the Channel in darkness, ate supper somewhere over Belgium, and landed the next morning outside Weilburg, in the German duchy of Nassau: about 770 kilometres in around 18 hours. The distance record stood into the twentieth century. Ballooning was learning the habits, weather sense and margins that make the modern safety record possible.
The ice kept the photographs
The century's last great balloon adventure was its saddest. On 11 July 1897 the Swedish engineer S. A. Andree lifted off from Danes Island, Svalbard, with Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel, hoping to drift the hydrogen balloon Ornen, the Eagle, across the North Pole. Most of the steering lines were lost at launch, and after about 65 hours of fog and ice the Eagle came down on the pack, intact but finished. The three men hauled sledges across drifting ice for months and died on the barren island of Kvitoya in the autumn of 1897. Nothing more was known for 33 years. In 1930 a Norwegian sealing ship found their last camp: diaries, remains and Strindberg's undeveloped film. The negatives had survived their Arctic burial, and the world finally saw the Eagle lying on the ice, photographed by men who did not survive the year.
Fly in a tamer century
Today's balloons fly on calm mornings with weather briefings, radios and insurance, and the wildest thing on board is the view. Find the season and hour that give the smoothest ride.
Pioneers and daredevils FAQ
Who was the first woman to die in an aviation accident?
Sophie Blanchard, on 6 July 1819. During a night show above the Tivoli Gardens in Paris her fireworks ignited gas leaking from her hydrogen balloon; the balloon burned, struck a rooftop and she fell to the street below.
When was the English Channel first crossed by balloon?
On 7 January 1785, by Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries, flying from Dover to a wood near Guines in about two and a half hours. To stay out of the sea they threw overboard nearly everything aboard, including Blanchard's trousers.
What happened to the Andree polar expedition?
The balloon Ornen launched from Svalbard on 11 July 1897 and came down on the pack ice about 65 hours later. Andree, Strindberg and Fraenkel trekked for months and died on Kvitoya. Their remains, diaries and undeveloped photographs were found in 1930.
What was the longest balloon flight of the 19th century?
Charles Green's, in November 1836. Flying the Royal Vauxhall with Robert Hollond and Thomas Monck Mason, he covered about 770 kilometres from London to Weilburg, in the German duchy of Nassau, in around 18 hours. The distance record survived into the twentieth century.