A. new British record for dirigible balloons has been set
up by Mr. E. T. Willows, a native of Cardiff, who has been experimenting with airships for the last five years. Starting from Cardiff at 8 p.m. last Saturday night, Mr. Willows crossed thirty miles of the Bristol Channel, passing over Bristol at 930 p.m., and flew on by Marshfield, Chippenhara —where he came down low enough to inquire his way—Caine, Marlborough, Reading, and Chertsey. Mr. Willows's experi- ence of the megaphone is worth recording :—" You cannot imagine how curious it is to hear the echo which comes up from the earth when one calls down ; at first one thinks it an answer—one can manage to hear at a height of nearly seven hundred feet—and then one finds one is only being mocked by one's own voice." His petrol gave out at 5.40, and he lost his grappling-iron, but the rope was caught by a labourer, and he descended safely at Lee, near Eltham, at 6.36 a.m. Mr. Willows travelled at a height varying, for the most part, from five hundred to two thousand eight hundred feet, steering by the stars, consulting his map by a small electric lamp, and following the railway line from Chertsey onwards. His speed averaged fifteen miles an hour, but while crossing the Channel he travelled at four times that speed, and he had to stop his engine twelve times in order to inquire his way in the dark.
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