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The airship, a lighter-than-air craft capable of guided flight, was the goal of many a would-be inventor in the latter half of the 19th Century. So, it is not surprising that in April of 1897 the people of Vincennes thought they saw the "inevitable airship" sailing overhead in the night sky. (See story in last week’s Valley Advance).
Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before some obscure tinkerer somewhere found the right combination of design and materials and soared in his "flying machine," to become as famous as Edison or Bell - so why not at Vincennes? Or even St. Francisville, Ill.?
Thus it was that the Vincennes Daily Sun of Nov. 6, 1879, announced that:
"Ellis, the St. Francisville youth, still insists that the air can be navigated. He has filed a caveat of his invention, and Hon. S.Z. Landes of Mt. Carmel will furnish the capital to construct a ship of sufficient capacity to carry three or five men. The construction of the vessel will commence about the first of December, at Vincennes or Evansville."
The readers of the Daily Sun were probably not too startled. After all, on Aug. 26 many had seen a young balloonist ascend from the intersection of Second and Main, and rise more than "a mile and a quarter" into the air while performing thrilling stunts on a trapeze suspended below the balloon. Balloons were nothing new. The people of Vincennes had seen balloons since the 1850’s.
The young inventor, William F. Ellis, wanted to make it clear that his proposed airship was more than just another balloon, at the mercy of the wind, that it was self-propelled and steerable. In a letter to the editor of the Sun headlined: "Air Navigation; An Alledged Invention that Will Break Up All the Railroad Corporations in the Country," and dated Nov. 16, 1879, Ellis answered the skeptics:
"I pencil you a few facts in regard to my invention. For three or four years I have at intervals talked air navigation, and have invariably been scoffed at by every person that I have conversed with-- and now persons that hooted so loudly, after seeing my invention, deem it possible.
"What I claim to make it do: Navigate the air with both passengers and freight. When I say navigate I don’t mean that it will ascend and drift with the wind, I mean that it will run square against the wind, or to any point of the compass, and that it can be raised and lowered at will with perfect safety.
"I claim when put to test, that it will travel from sixty to eighty miles per hour with the wind, and that it will travel from thirty to fifty miles per hour against the wind, and that it will remain suspended in the air a sufficient length of time-- if necessary--to cross and recross the Atlantic Ocean."
Ellis enclosed several letters of recommendation from persons who had witnessed the operations of the model. He again stated that he would begin construction of a machine at Vincennes about the first of December, of a sufficient capacity to carry, as he said now, 15 men. To this communication, the still-skeptical editor of the Sun added the disclaimer, "As we desire to be on the safe side at all times, we urge the proprietors of the Petersburg Railroad not to despond."
Later the Nov. 22 Sun carried a denial from the Mt. Carmel Register that Landes would finance the airship: "Mr. L. is yet in his right mind, and so long as he retains his mental faculties can find other channels than the air in which to float his surplus wealth."
Despite his failure to get financing, Ellis was still hopeful. The Dec. 26 Sun said he had been in Vincennes recently "as firm in his faith as ‘Darius Green and his Flying Machine’." But Ellis had another problem to face besides developing an airship - a murder trial. On March 25, 1879, Ellis had been in Lawrenceville to give a temperance lecture. Frank Hickman, the local railroad agent, took to heckling him about his own drinking and his airship theories. Later that night, after both had been drinking, a fight broke out, and Ellis shot and killed Hickman. At the trial on Feb. 3, 1880, Ellis was found not guilty on account of self-defense.
Ellis, apparently, never got around to building his airship.
FIRST SAUCERS?--An air craft independent of wind currents was a dream long before the Wright brothers, and this area had its share of inventors . . . or charlatans. One unusual idea which fired imaginations in 1885 was the Capazza Lenticular balloon, which supposedly could be steered by shifting weight and resembled remarkably later flying saucers. This craft design was unrelated to those thought up in southern Illinois during this period.
EMAIL: rking@indian.vinu.edu