Monday, April 20, 2009

Steampunk Heroes in Wales - No.1 The Father of British Airships


Wales has many interesting claims to fame with regard to matters of a steampunk nature. The most unsung one is perhaps of particular interest. Everyone with a vague interest in the matter knows of Graf von Zeppelin, who gave his name to the most famous airship design. The modern airship age began in July 1900 with the launch of his rigid airship design Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ1. This was a culmination of a long history of airship design in which the French, Americans and Germans had all played significant roles, but around the turn of the century airships were becoming increasingly successful due to lighter engines and new designs. Another famous development came in France in 1901, Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian, in his airship Number 6, a small blimp, won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000 francs for flying from the Parc Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back in under thirty minutes.At the same time aircraft were developing as well and all sorts of flying machines were being developed.


Britain very much lagged behind in airship design and few in Britain know today of the man known as the father of British airships, and his early experiments in airship design in Cardiff. This unsung hero was Ernest Thompson Willows (1896-1926) and he was born and brought up in Cardiff in Splott. Willows was the son of a dentist and intended to take up that profession and had training from his father and at Merchant Venturers Technical College in Bristol. Yet it was not for dentistry he was to become known to the world but for his hobby - his interest in aeronautics. Willows as an amateur at the age of nineteen with no formal engineering training got his first workable airship design, the Willows Airship I, into the air in June 1905. It made short flights in Cardiff Bay area near where he had his workshop in East Moors. At the time of course Cardiff was one of the busiest shipping ports in the world. This was one of the first workable British airships, even though foreign designs had flown in Britain and other British designs had flown in the Victorian period and more recently in London around 1900 and 1902 none of them were particularly notable or successful. One of them the Barton airship lost control and crashed in 1905.

One history of aviation describes his achievement:" Mr E. T. Willows of Cardiff produced the first successful British dirigible, a semi-rigid 74 feet in length and 18 feet in diameter, engined with a 7 horse-power Peugot twin-cylindered motor. This drove a two-bladed propeller at the stern for propulsion, and also actuated a pair of auxiliary propellers at the front which could be varied in their direction so as to control the right and left movements of the airship."

Although Willows designs were small by the standards of continental designers they had a major advantages compared to other British designs - Willows airships actually flew and moreover he kept improving his designs making six different airships. Of course from a steampunk perspective the fact he was at first an amateur makes his success all the more attractive. His can do attitude can be seen by the fact that when Willows was unable to purchase bottled, compressed hydrogen he manufactured the gas himself, using his own, inevitably crude, facilities to dissolve zinc in dilute sulphuric acid.

With WILLOWS No. 2 airship a new level of success was attained. No. 2 was a semi-rigid design 86ft (26.2m) long and 22ft (6.7m) diameter with a 29,000 cubic feet (820m³) volume. In June 1910 he flew the airship round central Cardiff successfully landing near the City Hall before a crowd of 20,000 as seen in the photo.



On 6 August Willows flew the airship 150 miles to London at night the longest flight ever made in Britain by an airship at the time, and making the first ever crossing of the Severn sea by air, in a little less than ten hours, making an average speed of over 14 miles an hour. His departure was delayed by having to repair his gasbag because some lout had thrown a stone at it. The best speed accomplished was probably considerably greater than this, for at intervals of a few miles, Willows descended near the earth to ascertain his whereabouts by shouting at the ground with the help of a megaphone as well as by steering by the stars. This feat was recorded in The New York Times:

NIGHT FLIGHT TO LONDON.; Welshman in Dirigible Sails from Cardiff to London, 150 Miles. Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES August 8, 1910, Monday

It should be noted that the automobile which supposed to help Willows by guiding him broke down an important lesson concerning those unreliable machines. This photo shows the dashing aeronaut after this groundbreaking flight.



Willows III, was known as the City of Cardiff, and on 4 November 1910 it became the first airship to fly across the channel from London to France carrying him and a passenger Frank W. Goodden [earlier airships had achieved the feat in the opposite direction]. This feat was done at night and was complicated when the maps were lost over the side. He celebrated the new-year with a flight around the Eiffel Tower. Willows efforts had attracted much attention and he became the first person in the UK to hold a pilots certificate for an airship when the Royal Aero Club awarded him Airship Pilots Certificate No. 1.

Willows designs now attracted government attention and his larger craft Willows No 4. was bought by the government as part of Britain's rather ill-fated pre-war airship programme. It was bought for £1,050 in September 1912 by the Admiralty and it became His Majesty's Naval Airship No. 2. Relatively little attention was paid to it as larger airships were seen as more important it was intended to be used for training. With the coming of the war Willows signed up and helped train airship and balloon pilots, in the Royal Flying Corps, gaining the rank of Captain. He designed barrage balloons including one which could be tethered at 10,000 feet a ring of such balloons were used in London.

As the war developed it became clear that airships could play a vital role but it was not the RFC who saw them as important but the Royal Navy. For Britain air naval patrol against U-boats became essential when in 1914 U-boats started terrorizing British coastal waters. Small blimps of the type Willows created were very important because they were cheap and could patrol for a long time compared to any aircraft. Thus orders came from the Admirality that Britain needed lots of small airships very quickly. To construct a cheap design for the first " S.S." 1 (submarine scout class airship) the gas bag from Willows no 4 was used in combination with the cheapest design for a gondola which was to use a B.E.2c aeroplane fuselage and engine minus wings, tailfin and elevators. On the 18th March 1915, less than 3 weeks after work began on SS 1 the new airship prototype was entered into service. Admiral Fisher commented his approval with the famous comment "Now I must have forty!"

They were not expected to destroy U-boats though they carried small bombs and did attack subs on a number of occasions but used their wireless sets to call in naval escorts. Affectionately named "battlebags" by their crews and "pigs" by the local civilian inhabitants, these craft became familiar around the coast of Britain and airship bases were set up around Britain, there were two in Wales - one in Anglesey and one near Pembroke. In total 158 “SS” Class ships were built and by the end of the war Britain had the largest fleet of non-rigid airships in the world. During the entire war there was only one instance of a ship being sunk whilst being escorted by an airship. During the final 15 months of the war SS type airships carried out over 10,000 patrols, flying nearly one-and-a-half million miles in more than 50,000 hours. Pigs could fly! It was this anti-submarine role of airships in Britain which inspired a similar crash airship building programme in the USA in WW2. Although Willows direct involvement in the programme was minimal one, design he contributed did not go into production, parts of his designs did help form the basis for this important contribution to the war. If Willows' craft had not existed the production of the SS type airships would have taken far longer. Of course if even a fraction of the money spent on larger airships had been used prewar on building small naval blimps then many ships sunk by U-boats may have been saved earlier.

After the war Willows became a hot air balloon exhibition aeronaut and he died in 1926 as a result of a tragic ballooning accident in Bedford and is buried in Cardiff in Cathays Cemetery. Willows is remembered in Cardiff by a street named after him in Splott – Willows Avenue – a school in Tremorfa and a pub.


Willows' achievements were notable in that he was working mostly by himself in his own small company as a book from the twenties comments:

"With the example of Germany before us, and despite the fact that Zeppelins were at least demonstrating good reason for further research and experiment, British airship pioneers were not merely left alone, they were treated with scorn. What a different history might have been that of the late ET Willows had he been given the slightest encouragement by the authorities, and for that matter by his countrymen."

The old flying days by Charles Cyril Turner 1927 Page 275


Clearly in a more reasonable universe Willows' designs would have led to the universal adoption of airships as the best form of transport. As the pub dedicated to Willows is close to the museum it may be an appropriate venue for a celebration of this great man close to the scene of his triumph. Find out more about Willows and his airships here:
Ernest Willows - Wikipedia

Willows Airships

Photos of Willows and his amazing airships:
Gathering the Jewels:: Transport :: Pioneers :: Willows, Ernest T

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Murders in the Museum: A Case of Dangerous Darwinism - Cardiff Steampunk

Sunday May 10th 1909

In a Wales in which airships and steam automatons are common a series of hideous murders connected to The National Museum of Wales has shocked Cardiff. Does this have something to do with the startling theories of Alfred Russell Wallace (from Usk) and Charles Darwin regarding the evolution of Species by a process of Natural Selection?

A group from The Guild of Adventurers of The Silurian Steam Republic has been called in. We must search for clues by investigating an exhibition on evolution commemorating the centenary of Darwin’s birth and his connection to Wales in the museum. Who knows what we may discover and what horrifying implications there may be for humanity's place in the universe? As religion and science face each other in a terrible conflict only one thing is certain it will be an adventure suitable only for those willing to grapple with extreme science and face hideous danger with steadfast courage.

As well as extreme peril the adventure will include a chance to socialize with other adventurers of varying occupations and in all probability a visit to a public house.

Meet outside the museum at noon or in the Grand Entrance Hall. Look for the group of fashionably dressed people.

[Chrononauts be advised appropriate clothing for the period is advised though not essential.]

Aethernet address for the museum:
http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/cardiff/

There is also a facebook group here:
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=71729901169

There is a Thread at Brass Goggles:

What is steampunk?

There are plenty of conflicting theories on what is and is not Steampunk out there. My short definition would be that Steampunk is a fabulous reimagining of the world of the Industrial Revolution that melds together alternative history, fantastic technology and a neo-Victorian style. It involves books, comics, films, costuming, gadgets and a thriving social scene.

For another summary of what steampunk is the Wikipedia entry gives a good background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

Brass Goggles blog and forum is one of the best sites on steampunk:
http://brassgoggles.co.uk/

Steampunk magazine is great and can be downloaded for free:
http://www.steampunkmagazine.com/

For amazing steam inventions:
http://steampunkworkshop.com/

There are loads of other sites out there and it is being covered in the press too:
Http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/oct/17/popandrock2

The name of this journal and the group comes from an alternate history I have long imagined where South Wales has become a Steam based Republic following the success of the Newport Rising in 1839 and the ensuing triumph of Chartist revolution across Britain. Following The Great Steam War which saw the defeat and  exile of the monarchy and its supporters Engineering and Science flourished under a new regime which emphasised universal rights and education for all, especially as advanced scientific weaponry had proved vital in the battle to establish a more democratic Britain.  In Wales this scientific advance is tied to a rapidly developed Druid order - the Steam Druids as they are popularly called. It is a bit of an antidote to some of the more Imperialistic Steampunk imaginings you see around.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Steampunk in Wales - It Begins!

By popular demand I am creating an Aethernet journal dedicated to steam related musings pertaining to Welsh Wales, Cambria, and Cymru. The cradle of the Industrial revolution must have a place in steam related adventures for there are many strange connections between Wales and steampunk.