Mapping the 1913 phantom airship scare

By in 1910s, Maps, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships, Tools and methods No Comments


View Scareships, 1913 in a larger map

Here's where the 1913 phantom airship sightings took place. Actually, there are a few from late 1912 (including the Sheerness incident), the blue ones. Red indicates sightings in January 1913, green February, cyan March, and yellow April.

A quick visual inspection shows that the density of sightings was greatest in Lancashire and Yorkshire, in a belt running from Liverpool in the west to Hull in the east. However, this perception is skewed somewhat by the cluster of reports from about a dozen places in and around Selby on 21 and 22 February. Clearly something happened there that night, and whatever it was can in no way be discounted, but Yorkshire would stand out far less otherwise (though there would still be the sightings from around Hull and Grimsby, including that from the City of Leeds, about the last of the whole scare to generate widespread interest in the press). By contrast, the clusters around Manchester and Liverpool, though smaller, are also more sustained, with reports spread out over four or five weeks. Other significant groupings include the south-east of England and, relatively late in the scare, the east coast of Scotland. And, of course, the coastline either side of the Bristol Channel, which featured prominently in the scare from almost the first to almost the last. Cardiff was the place most frequented by mystery airships, with four visits recorded at long intervals; that the Chief Constable of Glamorganshire was one of the first to see it and was willing to publicly appeal for witnesses to come forward may help explain why hundreds or even thousands of people saw them there. Only Hull presents a similar example of a mass sighting, though there were others where smaller crowds gathered to watch the scareship. It's also worth noting that there were occasional reports of mysterious airships from Ireland and from the Orkneys.
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This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

Acquisitions

By in Acquisitions, Books 2 Comments

Peter Bowler. Darwin Deleted: Imagining a World without Darwin. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2013. I figured I should put my money where my mouth is and at least buy this, and hopefully even read it. Bowler uses a counterfactual approach in an attempt to elucidate how important Darwin was to the development of Darwinism by taking him out of the picture. What I like about this is that it's not a narrative describing one particular possible alternate timeline, which is the default mode of writing counterfactual histories even when done by academic historians. Instead Bowler is deliberate and analytical all the way along, weighing the (real) evidence and explaining his conclusions. If counterfactual history has any value beyond simply pointing out that things might have been different, it's in something like this approach.

Siân Nicholas and Tom O'Malley, eds. Moral Panics, Social Fears, and the Media: Historical Perspectives. New York and London: Routledge, 2013. Lots of good stuff about such things as Edwardian wireless, the enemy within, A Clockwork Orange, and fear in East German television, plus several more reflective/theoretical essays. Turns out that I follow two of the contributors on Twitter (@DavidjHendy and @JohnCarterWood), which is probably not a coincidence. If you're a writer, you really should be on Twitter.

S. C. M. Paine. The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Argues that the Sino-Japanese War, the Second World War, and the Chinese Civil War need to be understood together, as a long cascade of conflicts. It's certainly novel to see all these wars being given approximately equal space, when two of them are glossed over in most of the histories I tend to read and the third is somewhat dominant. The focus is much more political and strategic than operational, and Paine focuses on the prewar decades in China and Japan (and the Soviet Union) as much as on the actual wars themselves.

Bomben auf Amerika?

By in 1910s, Art, Books, Ephemera, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures 3 Comments

That Liberty Shall Not Perish From The Earth, 1918

John Ptak recently pinned a 1964 science fiction magazine cover depicting a ruined Statue of Liberty, predating the more famous ending of Planet of the Apes by four years. He wondered about earlier images along the same lines, and after a bit of digging I found not many at all. The above is the only example, but it turns out to be relevant to my interests. It's an American propaganda poster dating to 1918, appealing to the viewer to invest in the latest war bond issue. Lady Liberty is ruined all right — her head and her torch have tumbled down beside her. Behind her New York City is burning, and the flames and their reflection in the harbour dominate the image. The cause of the destruction is presumably the aeroplanes which can be seen on either side of the Statue. A submarine is also sailing past, which may be responsible for the merchant vessels wrecked on Liberty Island.
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Lest we forget what?

By in 1910s, After 1950, Australia, Books, Contemporary, Pictures 6 Comments

2010 Anzac Day clash

Today is Anzac Day, the anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli of Australian (and New Zealand, though my remarks here mostly pertain to my own country) troops on 25 April 1915. In the last two decades Anzac day has increasingly been seen as marking the coming of age of the nation, and its annual commemoration has become the most sacred event on the national calendar. And as a military historian I think this is a problem.

The original diggers are gone now, and the numbers of the veterans of later wars are diminishing rapidly too, but dawn services at local war memorials and overseas battlefields seem to only become more popular. Broadcast, print and social media are filled with ritual invocations to never forget. New forms of commemoration appear. Stories of courage and sacrifice are told and retold. This is not in itself a problem. I'm not against Anzac Day, as such, and there's nothing wrong with remembering. It's what we're not remembering, or never knew in the first place, that is worrying. We should be looking to understand, not merely remember.
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Post-blogging the 1913 scareships: conclusion

By in 1910s, Blogging and tweeting, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships 2 Comments

Yesterday's post was, thankfully, the last entry in my post-blogging of the 1913 phantom airship wave. I've searched the available (to me) primary sources up until the end of April 1913 and can find no further references; and Watson, Oldroyd and Clarke's exhaustive compilation of phantom airship sightings has only 7 entries from May onwards. In fact in terms of people seeing scareships it really was over by mid-March, but I'm also interested in people talking about scareships, which lingered a little longer. It's definitely time to draw a line under the exercise, and to start analysing what I've found in preparation for my AAEH paper. There'll be more posts along those lines in future, but here I'll comment briefly on the post-blogging as post-blogging.

By some measures this was the most extensive attempt at post-blogging I've yet carried out: 69 posts over nearly four months. That's nearly twice as long as the Sudeten crisis series, and nearly four times as long as the 1909 scareship wave posts. Still, there wasn't a post every day and the scareships only briefly dominated the news, for about a week at the end of February 1913, so researching and writing the posts wasn't as gruelling a task as for the Sudeten crisis or the Blitz. The latter series in particular was quite tough to write as there was so much on-topic material that I had to be very selective. Also, I wanted to give space to non-Blitz news when the press gave it priority. I decided not to do that this time for a couple of reasons. One was, obviously, to save time. The other was that I wanted to focus squarely on the phantom airships themselves; with very few exceptions I only quoted from newspaper articles which mentioned them in some way (even if only in passing), and talking about other things would have obscured the scareship signal. I'm not sure that this was a wise choice, as this means that so much of the context is missing. For example, there was a lot of discussion of airships and the menace they posed in this period that didn't refer to mystery airships at all: the phantom airship scare was only one part of a greater airship scare. Hopefully a sense of this came through. Of course I noted all these other airship references for my own purposes and will use them for writing my paper. There's also the wider European military and diplomatic situation, particularly the fighting in the Balkans and things like France's move to a three-year conscription period and increases in German military spending. This is all obviously relevant background, and again some of it snuck into the posts. But apart from the expansion and activities of Germany's Zeppelin fleet, few explicit links were made in discussions of scareships. Likewise for all the other preoccupations of the press at the time, though intriguingly suffragettes seem to get jokingly mentioned alongside scareships reasonably often, which perhaps suggests they both had this combined aspect of menace and mirth. But that's getting perilously close to analysis, so I'll end this here.

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

Tuesday, 22 April 1913

By in 1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Pictures, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships No Comments

Aberdeen Daily Journal, 22 April 1913, 4

A rather belated mystery airship report appears in today's Aberdeen Daily Journal (p. 4):

It was reported a few days ago that on the evening of the 9th April [1913] an airship, steering north-west, was seen from the island of Stronsay, Orkney. Doubt was felt at the time as to the reliability of the report, but information has since been received from other parts of Orkney of an airship having been seen about the same time and proceeding in the same direction.

It may be significant that the Orkneys are the location of Scapa Flow, an important naval base used for fleet exercises. An airship was seen from the neighbouring island of Sanday in late February.

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

Saturday, 19 April 1913

By in 1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships No Comments

The Economist follows up last week's third leading article about the airship scare with the fourth leading article today (an extract from which also appears in the Manchester Guardian). This time around the subject is 'THE "DAILY MAIL'S" MANSION HOUSE MEETING FOR AIRSHIPS' (925), which is planned for 5 May and will feature speeches by 'Mr. A. J. Balfour, Lord Roberts, Lord Rosebery, Lord Brassey, and "other leaders of our public life."' It quotes at length the Daily Mail's own announcement from 12 April:

The Lord Mayor (Sir David Burnett) will be supported at the meeting by a representative gathering of eminent sailors, soldiers, statesmen, and leaders of commerce. All shades of politics will be represented.

Resolutions will be put urging that Supplementary Estimates should be prepared to provide for at least a two-to-one superiority over the airships and aeroplanes of the next strongest naval Power. That Power has at present 28 first-class airships, of which we have none, and a marked superiority in aeroplanes.

The announcement of the meeting has drawn a chorus of approval from many parts of the country. Among the many letters received at the offices of the Navy League in Victoria street yesterday was one from Lord Selborne, who wrote:– 'The urgency and importance of aerial defence cannot easily be exaggerated.'

According to the Economist, 'the Daily Mail's campaign, if successful, will add enormously to the burden of the taxpayers (to say nothing of the loss of human life*), and, incidentally, in all probability, will promote a flotation of companies for the manufacture of airships and aeroplanes'.

Now the Stock Exchange is beginning to talk of an airship boom, whose sole basis will be the prospect of diverting huge sums of money from the pockets of the public into those of existing or prospective airship concerns. We cannot help thinking that the sensational Press has been going to work in a very improper way. National defence, national credit, and national taxation are serious matters. And yet, just before the Army and Navy Estimates were produced, lying reports were circulated in all parts of the country that German airships were hovering over the East Coast. It is very difficult even for the most simpleminded and credulous citizen to believe that these reports were manufactured and circulated with purely patriotic motives. It is already known that airship plants are being laid down by well-known constructors with the Admiralty and War Office for the purpose of securing Admiralty and War Office contracts.

While allowing that 'those interested in company promotions and in the movements of armour-plate shares' may believe themselves to be motivated 'solely by patriotic anxieties', and that 'The Press, indeed, may be pure', the Economist hopes that

the Lord Mayor will not preside at the meeting of May 5th for the purpose of forcing a Daily Mail airship programme upon the Government, unless he is convinced (1) that the national expenditure and taxation will admit of supplementary estimates; (2) that Consols are not sufficiently low and the Sinking Fund not sufficiently small; (3) that a Government which has added in four or five years at least 12 millions sterling to the annual cost of the navy, and has raised the income-tax to 1s 7d in the £ on high incomes, requires further stimulus from the City, and (4) that a ratio which has never been applied to the Navy should be applied to airships.

The City may want the Government to spend more on defence, but does the City want to pay more in taxes?

If it does the Daily Mail has pointed the way. If it does not, then let us pause before we join in promoting the wholesale manufacture of new and costly toys whose value in war is highly problematical, whose commercial utility is certainly nil, and of which we already have a supply large enough to provide a weekly list of deaths, injuries, and other excitements for the Yellow Press.

Some experimentation 'is no doubt necessary [...] But to fritter away public money on practically useless types is merely a waste of national resources'. And, according to 'an English expert, just returned from Berlin [...] of the 16 Zeppelin airships which have been constructed in Germany six only remain, the other ten having perished miserably'.

* A military balloon accident near Paris on Thursday left two officers dead and a third critically wounded: 'Would airship promoters be so zealous if compulsory service in airships were applied to them?'

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

Acquisitions

By in Acquisitions, Books 2 Comments

E. H. Carr. What is History? Camberwell: Penguin Books, 2008. Second edition. What indeed?

David Edgerton. England and the Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines. London: Penguin, 2013. Second edition. England and the Aeroplane was first published in 1991 and is now a key text for understanding modern Britain's relationship with technology in general and aviation in particular (I see it was one of the first books I read during my PhD, and it's one I return to frequently). So a second edition is welcome. What's new? Apart from small revisions to the text there's the subtitle, the illustration captions and some of the illustrations, a reflective preface, and perhaps most valuable of all for those who already have the first edition, a ten page bibliographic essay on the relevant literature since 1990 (which cites my international air force article and refers readers to my 'magnificent blog' (200)! Ahem).

Catriona Pennell. A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Seeks to qualify the idea of war enthusiasm in Britain in 1914, and the lack thereof in Ireland, apparently resoundingly successfully. Uses letters and diaries as well as newspapers. The subject is of intrinsic interest but the methodology and sources will be valuable too. Zeppelins are discussed in several places, but sadly only real ones.

Michael C. Pugh. Liberal Internationalism: The Interwar Movement for Peace in Britain. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Again, the peace movement between the wars was more than just pacifism and it's surprising that there hasn't been a sustained look at British liberal internationalism before now. Has chapters on such things as disarmament, revisionism (aka appeasement) and education. One chapter, entitled 'Innovation', is devoted to the international air force idea, which gets it about right.

Richard Scully. British Images of Germany: Admiration, Antagonism & Ambivalence, 1860-1914. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Part of the reassessment of the Anglo-German relationship that has blossomed in the last decade or so (it's not just about Germanophobia any more), highlighting a new approach to the sources. For example, Scully argues that high literature needs to be studied in conjunction with low literature, rather than just one or the other in isolation. But he also draws extensively on visual sources such as maps and cartoons, with the second half of the book analysing the portrayal of Germany in Punch.

Alan G. V. Simmonds. Britain and World War One. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. The latest history of the British home front during the First World War (for some reason, the home front in the Second World War rarely seems to receive such comprehensive treatment). Politics, propaganda, production, prewar, postwar — it's all here.

Thursday, 17 April 1913

By in 1910s, Periodicals, Phantom airships, mystery aeroplanes, and other panics, Post-blogging the 1913 scareships No Comments

The Manchester Guardian reports today on Germany's naval aviation plans, as revealed in an official memorandum recently released to the public, which it judges to be 'important as marking the first step from tentative experiments to a period of ordered growth' (9). An 'explanatory statement' is likened to 'the famous Introduction to the Navy Bill of 1900':

Experience, we are told, has taught the Admiralty that the new weapon is of great value 'in strategic and tactical reconnoitring,' and that 'under certain circumstances it may be used with advantage as a weapon of attack.' In consequence, the Admiralty has decided to take up aviation more seriously than was at first intended, 'lest it should be left behind in the race with other nations.'

The memorandum itself proposes that Germany

construct, within the five years 1914-1918, a fleet of airships and aeroplanes to be used solely for naval purposes, acting quite independently of the military aviation department. The airship section is to be made up of two squadrons, each containing five ships. One ship from each squadron will serve as 'material reserve' — that is to say, will remain laid up in its shed; — the other eight will be kept on active service. The same station is to serve as headquarters for both squadrons, and is to be fitted up with four double revolving halls, together with two stationary halls for the 'material reserve.'

What sort of airships will be built is not specified:

At present the naval authorities possess one airship, the Zeppelin L 1, notorious in England through the scare raised last October, when it was asserted that the vessel had been sighted over Sheerness during the night in which its long-distance trials were made. A sister ship to the L 1 is nearing completion, but, as far as is known to the public, no further naval Zeppelins are under order at the moment. It may be taken for granted that the main body of the future fleet will be made up of vessels of this type [...]

The Guardian's correspondent is puzzled as to why the Admiralty has decided to put all of its airship hangars in the one place (where is not stated in the memorandum, but 'it is accepted as a matter of course that this will be Cuxhaven'). The Army is planning to build a network of hangars across Germany, which will minimise the chance of one its airships having to moor in the open and being wrecked by wind. In an emergency, naval airships will have to take that risk or hope that they are within range of home or Königsberg, the only nearby military hangar.

As for aeroplanes, 'the scheme outlined in the "memorandum" seems less ambitious, especially when compared with the plans of our own Admiralty'.

It is proposed, during the same period of five years, to bring together a squadron of 50 machines. Fourteen are to serve as 'material reserve'; the remaining 36, divided into six groups of six each, will be kept on active service. [...] As in the case of the airship section, one station is to serve as headquarters for all six groups. There are, it is true, to be six branch stations, each with accomodation for ten machines, but these are to be occupied only during occasional manœuvres and in time of war.

Again, the type of aeroplane is not specified, though in previous experiments 'The machine aimed at has been of the type that can rise both from land and water'. But at present 'Germany is far behind our own naval authorities in this branch of aviation'. The aeroplane squadron is likely to be based 'at Kiel or Wilhemshaven, each of which is within easy reach both of the North Sea and the Baltic'.

Finally, the Guardian's correspondent considers 'the possibility — even if remote — of the naval air-fleet being reinforced by military vessels'. The Germany Army is less forthcoming on the subject of future aviation plans, but anyway by their nature military aeroplanes will not be particularly well suited to naval service, so that leaves the military airships. It is known is fifteen airship companies are planned in total, each with a rotating hangar capable of holding two airships. If the Army fills these to capacity as the Navy is to do, then that makes thirty military airships by the end of 1915:

We must, then, to the proposed ten vessels for the navy, add a possible reserve of thirty more military vessels, a formidable enough fleet if once the value of the airship in naval warfare is admitted.

An unusually alarmist conclusion for the Guardian, it must be said.

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the scareship wave of January-April 1913. See here for an introduction to the series.

The uses and abuses of counterfactual history

By in After 1950, Australia, Counterfactuals, Periodicals 8 Comments

The death last week of Margaret Thatcher was, naturally enough, the occasion of a plethora of reflections on her place in history. Equally naturally, the value of these reflections varies (and no doubt depends partly on the politics of both the writer and the reader). One of the less valuable ones was written by Dominic Sandbrook, a historian who is best known for his well-received series of books on Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. His next book will cover the early 1980s and so his is an obvious shoulder to tap for some historical perspective on Thatcher's Britain. Which makes what he did choose to write, a piece for the Daily Mail called 'Cuba without the sunshine', all the more disappointing.

Part of the problem lies in the unusual form chosen for his article: it's a counterfactual history of Britain since 1978, assuming that the Labour Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, called and won an early election in October of that year, instead of waiting until May 1979 and going down to Thatcher's Conservatives, as actually happened. In principle there's nothing wrong with this. We implicitly admit the importance of counterfactual histories when we label some trend or event as being historically important, because we're really saying is that if that trend or event didn't happen then the subsequent course of history would have been different in some significant way (at least for the particular domain of history involved). So we should be able to use counterfactuals to think about Thatcher's importance.
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