# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Coxwell, Henry

​COXWELL, HENRY (TRACEY) (1819–1900), aeronaut, youngest son of Commander Joseph Coxwell of the royal navy, and grandson of the Rev. Charles Coxwell of Ablington House, Gloucestershire, was born at the parsonage at Wouldham, on the Medway, on 2 March 1819. He went to school at Chatham, whither his family moved in 1822, and in 1836 he was apprenticed to a surgeon, dentist. His boyish imagination was greatly excited by balloons, and he spared no efforts to witness as many ascents as possible; among the aeronauts he admired and envied as a boy were Mrs. Graham, Charles Green, Cocking, and John Hampton. The successful voyage of the Nassau balloon from Vauxhall Gardens into Germany stimulated his enthusiasm, but it was not until 19 Aug. 1844 that he had an opportunity at Pentonville of making an ascent. In the autumn of the following year he projected and edited 'The Balloon, or Aerostatic Magazine,' of which about twelve numbers appeared at irregular intervals. In 1847, at Vauxhall, he ascended in Gypson's balloon in company with Albert Smith, during a heavy storm, the descent being one of 'the most perilous recorded in the annals of aerostation.' An enormous rent was discovered in the balloon, and the lives of the passengers were only saved by Coxwell's readiness in converting the balloon, as far as possible, into a parachute. In 1848 he was entrusted with the management of a balloon, the Sylph, in Brussels, and subsequently made ascents at Antwerp, Elberfeld, Cologne, and Johannisberg in Prussia; in 1849 he exhibited his balloon at Kroll's Gardens, Berlin, and demonstrated the ease with which petards ​could be discharged in the air; in September he made excursions to Stettin, Breslau, and Hamburg. At Hanover, in the summer of 1850, he had a narrow escape, owing to the proximity of lofty trees, and during this year and the next he took up many passengers at Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Leipzig, and elsewhere. In 1852 he returned to London and made ascents at Cremorne Gardens. In September 1854 he made some demonstrations in signalling from a balloon at Surrey Gardens.
In June 1862 he made some interesting meteorological observations in the capacity of aeronaut to Dr. James Glaisher, F.R.S. On 5 Sept. in the same year Coxwell and Glaisher attained the greatest height on record, something between thirty-six and thirty-seven thousand feet, or 'fully seven miles.' Glaisher became insensible, and Coxwell lost all sensation in his hands, but managed just in time to pull the valve-cord with his teeth. The balloon dipped nineteen thousand feet in fifteen minutes, and a final descent was safely made near Ludlow (from Wolverhampton). Between these two famous ascents Coxwell made his first experiments in military ballooning at Aldershot in July 1862. In 1863, in company with Henry Negretti, he made the first aerial trip in England for purposes of photography. In 1864-5, in the Research, he made some very successful ascents in Ireland, and gave some lectures upon aerostation. When the Franco-German war broke out in 1870 he went to manage some war-balloons for the Germans. He formed two companies, two officers, and forty-two men, at Cologne, and his assistant went on to Strassburg, but the town surrendered before much service was rendered.
On 17 June 1885 he made his last ascent in a large balloon, the City of York. He had made an annual display at York for several years, and there he bade farewell to a profession of which he had been one of the most daring exponents for over forty years. His immunity from serious accidents was due to his instinctive prudence, but still more to his thorough knowledge of ballooning tackle. After his retirement he lived for a time at Tottenham, but migrated thence to Seaford in Sussex, where he died on 5 Jan. 1900. During 1887-9 Coxwell collected together in two volumes a number of interesting but ill-arranged and confusing chapters upon his career as an aeronaut, to which he gave the title 'My Life and Balloon Experiences;' to vol. i. is added a supplementary chapter on military ballooning. As a frontispiece is a photographic portrait, reproduced in the 'Illustrated London News' (13 Jan. 1900) as that of the foremost balloonist of the last half-century.
[Times, 11 Sept. 1862, 6 Jan. 1900; Illustr. London News, 13 Jan. 1900; Glaisher's Travels in the Air, 1871; Coxwell's My Life and Balloon Experiences, 1887-9; Hatton Tumor's Astra Castra; De Fonvielle's Courses en Ballon, 1890; Men and Women of the Time, 15th edit.]
T. S.