The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-29
A FAMOUS BALLOONIST.


 Thrilling Events in Henry Coxwelrs ca
 reer Recalled Apropos of His Death. MT. Henry Tracey Coxwell, whose death occurred January at Seaford will be remembered as one of the most active promoters in his time of that sci- ence of aerostation to which he devo- ted his life, and more especially, per haps, as one of the two heroes of what Is still to be regarded as the highest re- corded ascent.
 He was the son of a naval officer who had seen a good deal of active service, and was born In 1879 at Wouldham near Rochester. At that time balloon ing was still practically in it's infancy, the first aerial voyage in free balloon having been made in November, 17s3, when Pilatre des Rosters and the Mar ouis d'Arlands crossed the Seine and a considerable part of Paris in Montgol- fer otherwise balloon expanded by heated air. As a schoolboy Henry Coxwells interest in the new science was greatly exiited by the ascents, from Surrey Gardens, of MT. Green, fa- mous balloonist, who made something like thirteen hundred ascents during the course of his life. Young Coxwell took to making Montgolflers on his own ac- count, and at the age of fifteen he con- sidered himself already proficient in aerostation. His taste for ballooning became an all-absorbing passion, and between his seventeenth year and his ~,e-t ny1b1 In ascent in or near London. His own first ascent was made at the White Conduit Gardens, Pentonville, on Au- gust 19, 1S44. in company with Hamp- ton, and in 1s47 he joined Lieutenant Gale in numerous ascents from various public gardens in London. In that year, too, in company with MMr. Gyp- son, MT. Pridmore, and Albert Smith, he made a night ascent from Vauxhall Gardens amid a display of fireworks, but experienced on that occasion what he afterwards described as the most perilous descent on record. When the balloon was four thousand feet high storm broke, and, immediately after vivid flash of lightning, a rent sixteen feet long appeared in the balloon, which began to fall at terrible speed right over the West End of London. Fortu- nately, the network caught in the scaf- fold poles of some new hauses, and the fall was broken, MT. Coxwell being the only one who was hurt. So far, howev- CT, was he from being discouraged by this accident-due, as he showed, not to the lightning, but to the valve line not having been pulledrthat the follow ing week he ascended with double the quantity of flreworks--one hundred and twenty pounds instead of sixty pounds and on this occasion all went well.
 Up to 134S Coxwell was only an anna teur balloonist, and followed the occu- patton of a dentist; but in 1848 he had balloon of his own, and commenced series of professional ascents from number of different places on the conti- nent His first ascent from the Crystal Palace was in 1859, and two years after ward when ballooning in Derbyshire, he met with the first really serious &C., cident that occurred to him during the four hundred ascents he had made up to that time. But, though he had been severely bruised and crippled, his zeal
 
 ardor than ever in 1882, when, hearing that a committee of the British associ ation at Wolverhampton had been mak- ing some unsatisfactory experiments with a Cremorne balloon, in order to take meteorological observations in the upper regions, he set about the con- strucLion of a special balloon for this finally producing one that stood eighty feet from the ground, had a diameter of ffty-five feet, and was capable of containing, when fully inf1a- ted ninety-three thousand cubic feet of gas. Mry>James Glaisher, F. R. C., who was to go up with MT. Coxwell and take charge of the observations, while 1 MT. Coxwell himself was to attend to | the balloon. The first of the long se- 'ies of ascents thus carried out by them | Under the auspices of the British asso- | ,iation took place at Wolverhampton ] ,n July r, 1862, and on that occasion | hey travelled sixty miles iA two hours, ! md attained a height of four miles; but l he descent was 50 violent that a num- |