The Hooverville Hexagon: Local Histories

 

Call it a town, a city, a hamlet, a borough, an island…home is where the heart is.

 The Heroes of Yesteryear

by DG

Prompted by an unusual word, the writer is reminded of the inspirational heroes who gave their names to the local villages.

 

Have You Visited Your Local Library Lately?

by FWR

They're big Agatha Christie fans in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife..

 

Down-Home Music

(Video)

by DG

At a church picnic a few years ago. This music makes some people think of home.

 

SuzieQ Goes Shopping with the Romans

(in Carnuntum)

by Tavaron da Quirm

What? It was somebody's hometown, sometime.

 

This conversation took place in the sleazy space bar where the Core Team hang out.

 

Tavaron: This is in Carnuntum. I wrote an entry about it, it's a Roman city and there's an open-air museum where they rebuilt some houses on their former plots.
They add more and more over time and the newest addition is what they call the 'house of the oil merchant', which is the one with the amphoras.

They actually build the houses the way they did in the year 300 or something, so for instance the thermal bath has working under-floor heating and stuff.

Dmitri: I can see where the amphorae would be at an oil merchant's house. It was either that, or a Greek tourist shop....

Tavaron: Next to the merchant's house they had another small new building. I didn't take a picture because it was pretty dark inside, but it seemed to be a laundry room with a water basin and clothes racks.

I mean of course it was a Roman laundry room, not a modern one.

Dmitri: So, no washing machines?

 

This is the sort of high-level discourse you've come to expect from the Core Team.

 

Special Report:

Newtown, Isle of Wight

by Bluebottle

Kids: Try describing your town like this in a school report. Let us know what the teacher says. – DG

 

In the UK, a small settlement is a hamlet, a settlement with a church is a village, one with a charter granting it the right to hold a market and have a civic council is a town, while cities needed a cathedral before Henry VIII or a royal charter granting city status since the 1540s.

 

Between being granted a charter in 1256 and losing borough status in 1836 the smallest town on the Isle of Wight was Newtown, which has a church, a town hall and a pub that closed in 1911, but few houses or people since 1377.

 

The earliest written record of Newtown dates to 826AD when King Egbert gave the land to the Church of Winchester and then in 1001 the area was attacked by Danish forces under King Sweyn Forkbeard. Later in the 12^th century the area was still owned by the Bishops of Winchester at a time when Winchester was the wealthiest ecclesiastical see north of Milan. Wanting to supplement his London brothel income with other forms of revenue, in 1256 Bishop of Winchester Bishop Aymer planted a new borough town on the land next to Newtown Creek as an economic investment, naming it 'Francheville' meaning 'Freetown'. The town continued to be called Newtown, with both names used interchangeably. The land was divided into burgage plots, with roads named Gold Street and Silver Street, and while the Bishop of Winchester would collect rent, burgage owners were exempt from manorial duties and tithes and thus enjoyed greater legal, social and economic freedoms than most of the population. This stimulated growth and the town grew to be the largest on the Island and as busy a port as any on the Solent.

 

In 1284 Edward I requested possession of the town, confirming its liberties and customs in 1285. In 1297 a charter under Edward II granted, 'A market on Wednesday and a fair of three days'. Records show the town prospering through oyster beds and salterns and 70 of the initially planned 73 strips or plots occupied.

 

 Yet this prosperity was not to last. The town's population was devastated first by the Black Death in the 1350s and though it began to recover, the town was wiped out completely by a French invasion in 1377, when the town was burnt to the ground and the remaining population massacred. There is also local legend of a pied piper-like figure luring the local children away to their deaths, which some have linked to the Children's Crusade, but there is no evidence for this.

 

Queen Elizabeth I, in an attempt to promote growth and restore the town to its former glory, in 1584 passed a borough charter giving the town a mayor and the right to elect two MPs. A town hall was built in 1699 in which to hold the elections, which were based on those who held burgage rights. The

foundations of this building are known to be older. In 1664 there had been only ten occupied buildings in the town and for much of its time three families between them held the right to elect two MPs (poor men and women of any class not getting the vote before 1918). One MP was elected by the dominant Holmes family while the other two took turns to nominate the second. One of Newtown's MPs later became Prime Minister; George Canning. He was Newtown's MP twice, in 1793–1796 and 1806-1807 and later Newport Isle of Wight's MP 1826-1827 and was Prime Minister for 119 days (almost three Liz Trusses) in 1827 before his unexpected death. George Canning was a fascinating politician who dominated British politics for two decades, determined to act unofficially as Prime Minister even when he wasn't, only to die shortly after finally gaining the position he had strived so hard for all his life.

 

In 1783 John Wesley wrote,

 

'I went to Newtown, supposed to be the oldest town in the isle, but its glory is past; the church is in ruins and the town has scarcely six houses remaining'.

 

Newtown maintained having two MPs until the 1832 Great Reform Act. This was when parliamentary constituencies were changed to better represent the people of the United Kingdom, giving representation to those in cities such as Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester and eliminating many pocket boroughs, where one man determined who was elected, as well as 'rotten boroughs' like Newtown, where the degree of representation did not reflect the local population. The Isle of Wight went from having six MPs to one, becoming the UK's least represented constituency.

 

Newton's borough was dissolved following the Great Reform Act, with the Newtown Corporation deciding to build a new church as its last act. This was to replace the old church which had been built in 1592 and was known to be dilapidated by the 1660s. The new church, the Church of the Holy Spirit, was consecrated on 29^th November 1837.

 

While Newtown had been an ideal, if vulnerable, harbour in mediæval times, ships got bigger and

therefore needing deeper harbours as Newtown estuary silted up. However one industry survived, salt production. In 1700 a large sea wall was built. 120 acres of marshland were reclaimed to become pasture, nicknamed the Promised Land, while next to the sea salt flats were enclosed by a bank with sluices to control the water. Salterns or salt ponds were built there by the quay. Salt water was let into these rectangular ponds to a depth of a few inches and allowed to evaporate until a strong brine remained. This then was drained into the boiling house where the water was boiled, leaving behind crystalised sea salt. The quay was capable of berthing vessels of up to 500 tons. This industry was just beginning to turn the town's fortunes around in the late 19^th Century when salt mines were opened in Cheshire, making the harvesting of sea salt uneconomic. Salt production all-but stopped in 1900.

 

A sign of the brief period of economic prosperity can be seen in the Grade II listed village winding pump. Through the use of a wheel and internal geared winding mechanism, raising water was much less physically demanding than other types of pump.

 

In 1954 the Great Tide breached the sea wall and flooded the pasture, turning the Promised Land back into mud flats and ending 250 years of farming there. Consequently, much of Newtown was given to the National Trust in 1960. This was also as a measure to prevent the construction of a nuclear power plant there that had been proposed by the Central Electricity Generating Board in 1958. The campaign against the Nuclear Power Plant received strong backing from the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, which described the Newtown area as 'one of the most beautiful stretches of sea and landscape in the British Isles'. It is widely believed that the nuclear power plant proposal was made purely to be opposed so that when the CEGB instead proposed building a fossil fuel power station on the mainland at Fawley instead, it was easy for them to get this accepted and built.

 

 In 1980 the World Wildlife Fund paid for the creation of the Scrape, a wide bank-backed lake with islands inside to create an ideal bird sanctuary.

 

Today Newtown is part of the Isle of Wight UNESCO Biosphere, the site of a National Nature Reserve, and MoD Gunnery Range. The pub still shows Newtown's borough Seal, a Heraldic lion passant guardant (a walking lion with a full-face gaze is called a 'Leopard' in heraldry despite being a lion) onboard a ship, which is why the pub despite officially being called the 'Newtown Arms' was nicknamed 'Noah's Ark'. The pub called Last Orders in 1911.

 

If you look at Newtown on Google Maps you can still see the 
mediæval grid street layout and burgage divisions today, even where the roads have gone.

 

urs, Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor

 

The Hooverville Hexagon: Have Cameras, Will Travel, at Least as Far as the Corner

 What you see depends on where (and how) you look.

 

Where Are You Going?

by Practically Everybody

 

What's your favourite mode of transportation these days?

 

Glass Art, with Dog

by Paigetheoracle

 

 Broken glass of various colours (Dalmore house waterworks).

 

With dog for scale:

 

Come on Over, the Grass is Fine

(Video)

by DG

 

Cottontail rabbits move at their own speed, or not at all.

 

I Can See Myself

by SashaQ

 

Sandpiper, Burton Mere.

 

He Was a Fishmonger, and Sure,

'Twas No Wonder

by Galaxy Babe

 

Statue of a fishmonger in Alesund, Norway.

 

Thought for the Day:

Is a Picture Really Worth a Thousand Words?

Do you see that photo up there? The one with the fisherman? How would you describe it if you had to?

It falls to me as editor to put captions and alt-texts on things. Many of you never notice this. Others do, who like me have been through periods in their lives when they couldn't see all that well (my life has been one long pendulum between peering at the world and then saying, 'Wow! This new technology is amazing!').

Alt-texting is an art. You should practise it. It might help you photographers the next time you are tempted to dump a photo on me and then act surprised when I ask you what it is I'm looking at. The thing you thought was obvious? Probably wasn't.

The alt-text for the photo above, in case you can't find it: 'Statue, rather worn and discoloured with bird droppings, of a man with a box of fish and a barrel. Behind the statue you can see the colourful houses of the town.'

If you have an alternate suggestion, please post it in the comment section. And think of submitting alt-texts with your photos. Then you don't have to yell at me when I fail to appreciate what you wanted us to look at. Especially if what you wanted us to look at was in the background and out-of-focus, naming no names...

be seeing u (maybe), Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor

 

The Hooverville Hexagon: Adventures

 

To boldly split infinitives no one had dared to split before, said Douglas Adams.

 Years of Adventures

by Practically Everybody

Clockwise from upper left: Spain, England, Spain again, France, England. I'd like to be a mouse sometimes, myself.

 

The Brown-Eyed Susans of Autumn

by DG

They're reaching their goal: seeds. Making more Brown-Eyed Susans.

 

Adventurous Sheep

(Video)

by Robbie Stamp

Climb every mountain, baa...

Adventurous Birds

by the h2g2 Post Photographers

Birds: they hold the sky up.

The Enterprise and the US Balloon Corps

by DG

In honour of the 60^th anniversary of Star Trek.

 

These are the voyages of the Balloon Enterprise: its mission, to seek out and tattle on Confederate positions, to boldly go where no silk gas bag had gone before.

 

Here is a story about the Enterprise, a ground-breaking balloon. Like its later, fictional namesake¹, it suffered damage, got lost, set a speed record, and crashed several times. You shall learn. But first, we must meet Professor Lowe, whom the US National Air and Space Museum refers to as 'the grandfather of the United States Air Force².

 

A Man with a Dream and a Good Line of Patter

Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe (1832 - 1913) had little formal schooling and no money to start with, but he loved science. He was also fascinated by the idea of flight. His first attempt, sometime before his fourteenth year, involved a kite, a lantern, and a very angry tomcat. At fourteen he joined the entourage of Professor Reginald Dinkelhoff, who did chemistry demonstrations to a paying public. A couple of years later, he bought out Professor Dinkelhoff and became Professor Lowe. In those days, all you needed to be called 'professor' was some good material and a calling card. This was, after all, the age of PT Barnum, and TSC Lowe, like Barnum, was New England born and bred.

 

Lowe was enthusiastically self-taught and – you will pardon the expression – an enterprising showman. He did well on the lecture circuit – people back then were as easily bored as they are now, and there was no radio, television, or internet. So they would pay to sit in a lecture hall and listen to educational stuff. They'd even pay to see slide shows. The alternative was sitting at home playing cards or listening to the kids recite their party pieces, which goes a long way toward explaining the popularity of early TED talks.

 

In 1855 Lowe met and fell in love with another show business personality, an actress from France named Leontine. Leontine and Thaddeus went on to have a happy marriage and ten children together. Leontine also embraced her husband's lifelong love of flight. When he started making balloons, she sewed the silk pieces that went together to make the bags. She was his biggest fan. Lowe's father also joined the family business.

 

These gas-filled balloons are also called 'aerostats', from the Greek αηρ (air) and σταος (standing). The French were pioneers in balloon-making. For that reason, US newspaper reports sometimes referred to gas-filled transportation devices as 'montgolfieres' after the Montgolfier Brothers. The French military had used an aerostat named L'Entreprenant ('the enterprising one') at the Battle of Fleury in 1794. There is no indication that this influenced Lowe's choice of name for his balloon, as there had already been four US ships named Enterprise by this time. Lowe is said to have picked the name because of his 'enterprising' New England nature.

 

On 7 July, 1858, Lowe made his first flight aboard Enterprise, which was powered by coal gas. People took Professor Lowe seriously, as they should. He'd invented his own formula for the varnish on the balloon bag. He'd designed an improved altimeter³. He had interesting theories about how to use the jet stream – high-altitude winds – to navigate. To make use of these winds, an aeronaut either discarded ballast (sand) to rise, or partially deflated the bag to descend. It wasn't a dilithium crystal, but it was pretty impressive for its time.

 

Like Wernher von Braun, Thaddeus Lowe had a dream. Lowe's was to be the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon. But as with von Braun, there was an obstacle in the form of a war. As so often happens, innocent exploration had to take a back seat to military greed for technology.

 

A Speed Record and an Arrest (or Two)

Lowe planned to make a really big balloon to cross the Atlantic in, and that required deep-pocket backing. To raise awareness and needed cash, he spent 1859 and 1860 giving rides to prominent people, curious fellow-enthusiasts, and newspaper reporters who could be counted on to gush for a column inch or two. In early 1861 he was doing the same thing in Cincinnati on 20 April, just before he and Enterprise set off for Washington, DC.

 

At least, that's where he thought he was going.

 

Lowe ended up in Unionville, South Carolina, quite a bit south of Washington. The good news was: he'd set a speed record, covering at least 900 miles in the 9 hours of flight between 4 a.m. and 1 p.m.. The bad news was: South Carolina wasn't in the United States at this time, having seceded from the Union the previous December. The even worse news was: the United States was now at war with South Carolina and had been, in fact, for over a week.

 

Lowe was taken prisoner as a 'Yankee spy'. At least, he was taken prisoner after he'd convinced the locals he wasn't an extraterrestrial. Or the devil. He ended up in the Unionville jail. However, he was rescued by the town's newspaper editor, AW Thomson. Thomson and others signed a certificate attesting to the speed record – for proof of where he'd been, Lowe had brought along the Cincinnati late-edition papers, hot off the press. As direct service to the enemy capital had been suspended, Lowe and Enterprise were bundled onto a train headed back to Cincinnati by way of Louisville, Kentucky.

 

He got as far as Columbia, South Carolina, before being arrested again.

This time, the mayor bailed him out. It pays to be famous. The citizens of Columbia reckoned the Professor was a scientist, not a spy. They sent him on his way. Back in Cincinnati, he reinflated Enterprise and gave more rides to more journalists.

 

BALLOON ASCENSION YESTERDAY. – Professor Lowe made a second ascent from this city yesterday, in his balloon, accompanied by Junius H Browne, of the DAILY PRESS, WW West, and TC Freneau....
The ballast being rather heavy, the basket swayed to and fro in the crowd several times, but it finally moved off in a south-easterly direction, at an angle of about twenty five degrees, which necessitated the casting off of a portion of the ballast, to avoid the roofs of the houses. As the voyagers moved smoothly away they waved handkerchiefs to the crowd, who responded with enthusiastic cheers, and other demonstrations of interest in their welfare [sic]....
It is the intention of the Professor to descend, after having traveled an hour or two, discharge the passengers, and then proceed in his observations, as in his last voyage.
–Cincinnati Daily Press, 9 May, 1861

 

After this, Professor Lowe set out for Washington again.

 

This time, he ended up in Ottawa, Canada.

 

General of the Skies? Seriously?

When he finally got to Washington (by train), Lowe was sure about one thing: transatlantic balloon crossings could wait. The Union had to be saved first. So he reinflated Enterprise and set about convincing the US government that they needed an air force. In practical terms, this was a bit easier than it sounds. That was because Abraham Lincoln, another fierce autodidact, was a technophile.

Lowe gave demonstrations, and many were impressed.

 

To-day [20 June] Professor Lowe ascended, from the Armory lot. The capacity of the balloon was 20,000 cubic feet. It was provided with signal flags and a powerful telescope; but as the ascent was made late in the afternoon, and chiefly for the purpose of testing the practicability of maintaining a magnetic circuit and operating in the balloon, no reconnoisance [sic] was attempted. A circuit was established by looping one of the adjacent telegraph wires – the one between Alexandria and the War Department – with helix wires several hundred feet in length, wound upon a reel at the spot from which the ascent was made. The helix wires are very fine and flexible. They communicated with a delicate pocket Morse apparatus carried by the operator in the balloon. The helixes were paid out from the reel as rapidly as the ropes attached to the balloon. An ascent of five or six hundred feet was made, and the telegraphic arrangement worked charmingly. When at the utmost elevation attained, dispatches were sent to the President of the United States through the War Department.
After demonstrating the success of the experiment, Prof Lowe was tugged through the streets in his balloon, a distance of over half a mile, to the open lawn south of the White House, when the balloon was safely anchored for the night, with a view to repeat the experiment to-morrow, in the presence of the President and the Cabinet. With this telegraphic apparatus, and the means of making an aerial reconnoisance [sic], a General may be accurately informed of everything that may be going on within a long day's march of his position in any direction.
– Daily National Democrat, 09 July, 1861

 

Lowe demonstrated Enterprise to Lincoln and his Cabinet. He even sent Lincoln a telegram from the air. Lincoln was impressed, his advisors less so.

Politics in Washington being what they were, not everyone was accepting of the idea of aerial 'reconnoisance'. One wag suggested that Professor Lowe was bucking for the title of 'General of the Skies'. And of course the controversy went national.

 

Some wit in Cincinnati was moved to poetry:

Professor Lower would fain get high
At Government expense;
With big balloon he'd scale the moon
To spy Virginia fence;
To spot the camps of rebel Scamps
With telegraph and glass -
You ask me, friend, how will this end?
And I reply - in gas!
–Cincinnati Commercial, 28 June, 1861

 

It would take a test under fire to prove Enterprise's worth.

 

Don't Shoot! I'm on Your Side!

Lowe's chance came in mid-July, during the Battle of Bull Run. Lowe sent valuable information from his perch above the action. To get a better look, he untethered the balloon. When he started to descend, the Union troops started firing on the UFO. When they shouted, 'Show your colours!' Lowe realised he wasn't carrying a flag.

 

Memo to self: put some identifying marks on this thing. This is no doubt why subsequent depictions show Lowe's balloon basket in a red-white-and-blue flag motif. It's also why Lowe learned to line his basket with metal. Between friendly fire and distinctly unfriendly fire, the Professor soon became the most shot-at man in the Civil War.

In the meantime, Lowe flew Enterprise higher to get away from the troops. He finally came down two miles away – behind Confederate lines. This was not good. The 31st New York Infantry caught up with him, but unfortunately, he couldn't go with them. He'd sprained his ankle badly and couldn't walk. Also, he didn't want to lose Enterprise to the enemy. He'd have to wait for rescue.

 

Which arrived in the form of his wife Leontine. Advised of her husband's location by the 31st New York, she hitched up a buckboard and disguised herself as a farm woman. Embellished versions of this tale have her smearing herself with cow manure for greater verisimilitude. We won't swear to that. We have no information as to whether Leontine was a method actress. We can report that she brought the Professor and the Enterprise home safely.

 

The next day, the Balloon Corps was a done deal. The National Air and Space Museum has the document, a card hand-written by a president.

Will Lieut. Gen'l. Scott please see Professor Lowe, over Mon about his balloon? A Lincoln July 25, 1861

A further note: that card didn't work as well as Lowe had hoped. General Winfield Scott kept him waiting most of the day, 'too busy' to see him. It was not until Lowe returned with the president himself that Scott issued the necessary orders to make Lowe 'Chief of the Corps of Aeronautics of the United States Army.'

 

Notes for the Future

Lowe built more and bigger balloons. They were effective. The Confederates wanted their own balloon, of course. They tried making it of cotton, which they had plenty of due to the Union blockade. Cotton didn't work too well, but silk was hard to obtain (see Union blockade). So they raided the dress goods shops of the South for bolts of dress silk. The Confederacy's balloon was very colourful, and probably would have won the war on aesthetics.

 

Lowe often took officers up in his balloons as observers. This caused some military men to discover for the first time that they had a fear of heights. One of these was George Armstrong Custer, who sort of cowered in the basket and had to be cajoled into standing up.

 

In 1863, Lowe quit, wearied by stress, health problems, underfunding, and bureaucratic red tape. He moved to Philadelphia and invented an ice machine. The Balloon Corps – and the Enterprise – had done yeoman's service.

 

Shortly after the war, a German aristocrat and military man was on an expedition to Minnesota. There he ran across a balloon demonstrator who used to fly for the Balloon Corps. The German aristocrat took a ride. It changed his life, and the world. It took a few years, but Graf von Zeppelin put Professor Lowe's ideas to good use.

 

Lowe never succeeded in crossing the Atlantic in his gas-filled balloon. The challenge remained open for another century. Many unsuccessful attempts were made. In fact, the johnny-come-lately heavier-than-air aeroplane crossed the Atlantic in 1927, a year before the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin made its first (powered) transatlantic flight. Sport enthusiasts continued to pursue the goal of making it across the Atlantic in a non-powered gas or hot-air balloon. They finally made it, but it took a lot more money and more modern materials than Thaddeus Lowe ever had.

 

In July, 1978, Sir Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand crossed the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon. Starting in Maine, they briefly touched down in Ireland (long enough to demolish a stone wall) before both pilots bailed out into the ocean.

In August of the same year, Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman made the trip aboard the Double Eagle II in a (helium) gas-filled balloon. It took them 137 hours. They flew from Maine to Paris. Their gondola was named The Spirit of Albuquerque.

---

¹ Balloons were popular subjects for 19th-century speculative fiction writers. Edgar Allan Poe based his 1844 newspaper hoax (published in the New York Sun) on a balloon flight. Jules Verne wrote two books featuring balloons: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and Mysterious Island (1875). The plot of Mysterious Island takes advantage of the use of hot-air balloons in the US Civil War.
² We don't know if this makes him the great-grandfather of the Space Force or not.
³ The principle of the altimeter was first discovered by Scottish clergyman Alexander Bryce in 1772.

 

 cu on the flip side, Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor