The Wide World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 129, December, 1908Various
History
The Wide World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 129, December, 1908
Various
Adventure stories -- Periodicals; English periodicals; History, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals; Voyages and travels -- Periodicals
Morrell ascribed the disaster to the fact that he was forced by impatient
stockholders in the National Airship Company to make the attempted flight
before he had worked out certain details of the vessel’s construction
thoroughly. It is believed by those who saw the luckless craft that it was
constructed flimsily of poor materials and not inflated sufficiently. The
ill-starred aeronautic adventure not only cost many broken bones, but some
forty thousand dollars (more than eight thousand pounds) in money.
It would naturally be supposed that so complete and disastrous a failure,
after the expenditure of so large a sum of money, would have destroyed all
confidence in Morrell as a designer of airships, and would have put him
out of the business of aerial navigation for all time. But it was not so;
the enthusiast still asserts that he has discovered the true principle of
the navigation of the air, and that the National Airship Company is ready
to proceed with the construction of another craft, much larger and
costlier than the first one.
The new airship is to be seven hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet
in diameter, equipped with eight gasolene engines, developing nearly three
hundred and fifty horse-power and operating sixteen propellers. The inside
bag will be of light silk and the outside bag of heavy silk interwoven
with a material known as “flexible aluminium,” of which Morrell possesses
the secret. The new balloon is to have more than a hundred compartments,
many of which might be broken without disturbing the buoyancy or
equilibrium of the vessel.
A rigid platform is to be substituted for the canvas and netting cage in
which the unfortunate participants in the attempted ascent of the “Ariel”
rode. The new vessel is to cost one hundred thousand dollars (more than
twenty thousand pounds), and to be capable, if the inventor is to be
believed, of a speed of a hundred miles an hour. The really marvellous
things about the whole business are the unquenchable enthusiasm of the
inventor and the unfailing credulity of those who believe in him.
FIGHTING A TYPHOON.
BY A. P. TAYLOR, CHIEF OF DETECTIVES, HONOLULU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.
The story of the most disastrous voyage in the annals of the United
States transport service. The steamship “Siam” left San Francisco
with a cargo of three hundred and seventy three picked army horses
and mules, destined for “the front” in the Philippines. She landed
two mules alive at Manila. In this narrative Mr. Taylor, who was a
passenger on the ill-fated vessel, tells what became of the
remainder.
When the Japanese Government recently offered for sale the former Austrian
steamship _Siam_, a prize of the late war, there was concluded one of the
most remarkable romances of the United States army transport service. Four
flags have so far flown over this steamer, but her career is not likely to
conclude under the ensign of the Land of the Chrysanthemum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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