Frank McClean Read online

  He was a vice-president of the Institution of Civil Engineers from 1858, and its president in 1864 and 1865. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical and Geological Societies, among others, and a lieutenant-colonel in the Engineering and Railway Volunteer Corps. In the 1870s deteriorating health caused him to retire from active engineering, and he spent more time in leisure pursuits, travelling several times to Egypt and also visiting India, China and Australia. He died in Ramsgate, Kent, on 13 July 1873.

  John Robinson McClean’s only son, Frank (F K McClean’s father), was born in 1837 and went to school in Westminster, thereafter studying at Glasgow University (1852) and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1855, where he was a wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos, LL.D, FRS in 1859. While Bachelor Scholar of Trinity in 1859–62 he was involved in improving the drainage of the Fens, and in 1862 he joined his father’s partnership. Frank was resident engineer of the Barrow Docks and Furness and Midland Railway from 1862 to 1866, and then worked as an engineering consultant in London until 1870, when, aged 33, he retired from professional life. Having married Ellen Greg in 1865, he lived with his growing family at Ferncliffe, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, until they moved to Rusthall House, a new large residence in the same town, in 1884. There were three sons, of which Francis Kennedy was the second, and one daughter, Anna.

  During his retirement Frank indulged energetically in astronomy and other academic studies. He financed telescopes and observatories and promoted studies of them, and was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal in 1899. He also endowed scholarships at Cambridge. Frank McClean senior died in 1904.

  Aerostatic inclinations

  It will become evident that, in addition to his father’s fortune, Francis Kennedy (‘Frank’) McClean also inherited some of his interests, but his fascination and involvement with things aeronautical originated outside the family.

  Frank McClean made his first balloon ascent, from Battersea, London, on 12 July 1907, with The Hon Charles S Rolls (later a cofounder of Rolls-Royce Ltd) as the ‘pilot’, the balloon descending at Langley Park, Bromley, after covering eight miles in an hour and a half. Another ascent, with Oswald Short, was made on 16 July, when an altitude of 4,800ft was attained before the balloon descended at Dorking in Surrey, and on the 25th McClean made an ascent from the Crystal Palace with Frank Hedges Butler and ‘Miss Gorst’ and the balloon came down at Kenley. Although he made no further ascents in 1907 he clearly caught the ‘bug’, as that same year he was elected to membership of Aero Club (later the Royal Aero Club, RAeC) as an aeronaut, and then unanimously elected to replace Frank Hedges Butler on the Main Committee. The Aero Club had been founded in 1901 by a group of wealthy and enthusiastic balloonists, with the object of uniting aeronauts and obtaining balloons for members to fly. In 1938 McClean recalled:

  The Shorts’ balloon works at Battersea, London, in 1909, with the Venus (left) and Continental No 2 ready to ascend. The close proximity of gasometers containing coal gas was an asset for such sites, but the area was very confined by elevated railway tracks and was thus unsuited to aeroplane production and testing. (AUTHOR)

  The Aero Club Members in the years before 1909 were a quiet, sedate, genteel body, whose only vice was to be considered by the hoi-polloi as amiable lunatics. They consisted of city gentlemen, lawyers, wine merchants, Peers of the Realm and their offspring, and they dined together once a month at Jules’ in Jermyn Street [London]. The Club was at 166 Piccadilly, and their guide and secretary was Harold Perrin, of happy memory.

  They became more hard-bitten with the advent of mechanisation.

  In the early years of the twentieth century ballooning was a fashionable sport, though it has been estimated that there were probably fewer than a dozen privately-owned balloons in England at that time. One owner was Griffith Brewer, a patent agent who had made his first ascent in 1891. Brewer had also become a prominent member of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain (ASGB, later the Royal Aeronautical Society), founded in 1866 with heavier-than-air flight as its raison d’être.

  In 1907 Brewer was selected by the Aero Club as the English competitor for the second Gordon Bennett balloon race, starting from St Louis, Missouri, in the USA. His companions on a trial run from Battersea Park in London on 25 August were the Hon. Claud Brabazon and Eustace and Oswald Short, who had begun balloon manufacture in 1901, made their first balloons for sale in 1903, become established as leading British balloon manufacturers and were appointed aeronauts to the Aero Club in 1907. Brewer and Brabazon competed in the event on 21 October and managed to cover 350 miles during 25 hours aloft.

  Membership of the Aero Club brought Frank McClean into contact with these men and several other prominent balloonists, including Charles Rolls and J T C Moore-Brabazon (later Lord Brabazon of Tara), and also Eustace Short. These contacts were to have far-reaching effects in the years ahead.

  McClean had inherited his father’s abiding interest in astronomy, and was also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. One consequence of this was that he organised expeditions to witness eclipses in remote parts of the world, the first being to Flint Island in the Pacific, some 390 miles north-north-west of Tahiti, to observe an eclipse of the sun scheduled for 3 January 1908. Although his efforts to assemble a party in England were unsuccessful, he set off on 3 October 1907, taking some fifteen cases of equipment. He hoped that he would be able to find colonial astronomers to accompany him, and when he reached Colombo he received a telegram from C J Merfield of Sydney, Australia, offering assistance.

  In Sydney McClean was introduced to the astronomical photographer James Short and W E Raymond, both of whom worked at Sydney Observatory, and retired surveyor Joseph Brooks. This group, plus New Zealanders Henry Wincklemann and the Reverend F W Walker, made up McClean’s party. Reaching Flint Island on 23 December, they negotiated the channel blasted in the coral reef encircling the island and set up camp near a better-equipped party from the USAs Lick Observatory, led by Professor W W Campbell. The day of the eclipse dawned fine, but by 10am it had clouded over and there was a heavy rain before totality. Fortunately it cleared in time and the group succeeded in exposing a good number of glass plate negatives of the eclipse, then hastily packed and departed on the Taviuni that afternoon. Immediately upon arrival at Auckland, New Zealand, McClean sent a cablegram describing the eclipse to England, and details were published in the 23 January issue of Nature. He subsequently wrote an account of the expedition.

  In May 1908, having returned from Flint Island, McClean again took up sport ballooning with his own gas balloon, the Corona (50,000 cu ft capacity, probably built by Short Brothers). He recalled that ‘with good gas it could carry four persons, and it made many voyages from London to various points in England but never beyond’. On 28 May he visited the Balloon Factory at Farnborough, and on the 30th, with Corona entered for The Car Cup, he ascended from the Hurlingham Club at Fulham in London with Rolls, who was described as the pilot, ‘Cruickshank’ and ‘Lady Pajet’, and descended near Twyford (he does not say which Twyford) three hours later. Several more ascents followed.

  Three categories of ballooning were practised by the RAeC members. As described by McClean, these were: ‘The afternoon trip with no objective except pleasure, peace and quiet, and a view of the landscape unattainable at that time by any other means’; ‘Competitions to land nearest a given spot. This introduced problems of wind direction at various heights, maintenance of stability at any altitude considered best to reach that point, and a possible rushed landing’; and ‘Long-distance International Races, such as the Gordon Bennett Race, with the necessity of conserving gas and ballast, finding the strongest winds and avoiding the open sea.’

  Frank McClean’s first gas balloon was this one, the Corona, of 50,000cu ft capacity. It is seen here after descending in open country at Upper Hailing, near Rochester, Kent, at 4.45pm on 10 April 1909. (FLEET AIR ARM MUSEUM)

  The balloon envelopes were made from cotto
n or silk doped with varnish or rubber, and ‘stood a lot of rough usage in the process of getting back to earth’. The basket, ‘or, to be more accurate, the standing accommodation’, was always made of wicker, because ‘a rectangular wicker basket can, and does, take up any shape when violently impacted but resumes its original rectangularity when it comes to rest’.

  Strongly laced into the inside of the basket about a foot above the bottom was a rope, ‘to which passengers could cling in a crouching position with no part of their anatomies showing above the top’. This was only for use in a rough landing, and to guard against this eventuality a trail rope some 300 feet long, weighing from 50lb for ordinary balloons to 90lb for large ones, was hung from the hoop above the basket. Once this rope had touched the ground it slowed down the rate of descent by easing off the weight, and its friction acted as a brake to the balloon’s horizontal speed. An anchor was also provided, but, McClean wrote ‘… it had bad habits and was really useful only for hedges and strong fences. It bounced on hard ground and caused telegraph lines to go all hay-wire, while the job of retrieving it from tree-tops was of interest only to acrobats’. Lastly there was a ripping panel in the envelope to allow gas to escape in seconds when landing in a wind to prevent the balloon being dragged along the ground.

  ‘It will therefore be seen,’ McClean stated, ‘that there were ample safeguards against trouble on landing, while on starting off from the ground troubles that did sometimes occur were mostly due to lack of care.’

  ‘In fact, it may be said that, given ordinary habits and instincts of self-preservation, there was little danger to those in the balloon.’

  However, ballooning was not without its incidents and mishaps, as McClean recounts:

  Ordinary ballooning, as opposed to long-distance races, was a quiet pastime punctuated with incidents. Starting from the grounds of the Crystal Palace on one occasion, a flukey wind had given the balloon a false lift which petered out, and it made straight for the glass edifice. By pouring out bags of ballast (fine sand) the obstruction was cleared, but below the torrent of sand was an ample lady gazing up with open mouth, and the last seen by the aeronauts as the Palace was surmounted was of two companions beating her on the back to help the ejection of unwanted matter.

  On another occasion, at Hurlingham, with a large number of balloons starting on a point-to point, the Corona got out of hand in the wind and had to be ripped [on 11 July 1908, see below], while another in getting away tore open the top of one still on the ground.

  Once in the air the occupants were themselves at peace, usually, but the middle of a cloud lit up by flashes of lightning was poor for the nerves and there was nothing to be done about it.

  People and things on the ground were not so secure. The trail rope could, and did, do extensive damage to greenhouses and suchlike, which had to be paid for, and on one occasion after it had climbed over the telegraph wires on the side of a road it swung clear and hit a woman on the large of the back, resulting in damages claimed by an irate husband.

  But incidents of any magnitude were rare, and those in the balloons looked down on those who were earthbound while those below looked up to those above them, and the world was at peace.

  He ascended from Hurlingham in the Corona on 24 June with ‘Ld’ Royston and Jim Lockyer, alighting at Milford, near Godalming in Surrey, and on the 29th, when the Corona rose from Battersea, his companions were Hedges Butler and Jim Lockyer and they travelled to Crondall, near Farnham in Surrey. Another ascent from Battersea, this time on 6 July and again with Hedges Butler and Jim Lockyer, ended with a descent at Hainault Forest in Essex.

  Corona was entered for the Hedges Butler Challenge Cup event at Hurlingham on 11 July, but the take-off was abandoned owing to bad weather and the balloon was ripped on the ground to release gas quickly. Instead, McClean ascended in the balloon Britannia with Rolls (who probably still owned it at that time), Cruickshank, Westland and Simon Lockyer. He recorded that they covered 75 miles in 1 hour 56 minutes and reached a maximum speed of 49mph before descending at ‘Brandon’. He subsequently purchased the Britannia (78,500 cu ft), from Rolls, who had commissioned it from the Short brothers for the first Gordon Bennett Balloon Race in 1906, its capacity being the maximum permitted for this event. By the time McClean acquired it the Britannia must have been approaching the end of its useful life, as the life of a cotton balloon was two years, or three at best. Britannia was entered for the third Gordon Bennett Race, in October, held under the auspices of the German Aero Club, because the 1907 event had been won by a German and hence the 1908 race was to start from Berlin. McClean was to act as Griffith Brewer’s aide.

  Brewer’s account of this event, including technical details of the participating balloons, was published in the 24 and 31 October issues of The Field. Describing the gathering of balloons, he wrote:

  All the twenty-three balloons in the race were spherical in form, the original pear-shaped balloon now being obsolete. All the German balloons were of rubber fabric, and many of the foreign balloons were of similar manufacture and material, being coloured a dull yellow. The British balloons were all of varnished cotton, and the Banshee, a beautiful translucent balloon with its luxurious car [specially built by Short Brothers for the event], looked not only a worthy supporter of British aeronautical honours, but, with its padding and soft carpet, seemed like a Pulman [sic] car in comfort, compared with the bare provision of absolute necessity in the tiny baskets of rival competitors. One balloon stood out from the rest in its beauty, being covered with aluminium paint, which glistened in the sunshine like a ball of silvered glass.

  McClean’s account

  Fortunately McClean also wrote a very complete account of the event. His use of the present tense in certain places suggests that it was written shortly after the race, but it was apparently not published until shortly after his death in 1955. It is a graphic first-hand account of what it was like to participate in one of the world’s greatest ballooning events:

  In August of 1908, having purchased the balloon Britannia, it was arranged that I should act as assistant to Mr Griffith Brewer in the Gordon Bennett Race starting from Berlin on Sunday, the 11th of October.

  The essential features of atypical gas balloon of the era are shown in this working drawing of the 77,000cu ft Banshee, built by Short Brothers and the winner of the 1908 Gordon Bennett Race. The key is as follows: A – 36in-diameter wooden butterfly valve; B – waterproof shade or umbrella to protect the valve; C – rip panel extending from near the valve to the balloon’s equator; D – rip cord; E – breakable stops which break at a tension of 50lb and enable the rip panel to be torn away downwards when the rip cord is pulled; F – valve line attached to underside of the valve doors and extending right down through the balloon; G – the appendix, a varnished cotton pipe about 12ft long and of 36in diameter; open at the base; H – an auxiliary pipe attached to the underside of the balloon to enable gas to be added immediately before an ascent, after the appendix has been disconnected from the main gas pipe; J – leading lines, which divide and become network as they approach the balloon; K – drip band to cause rain or moisture to fall clear of the car and hoop; L – hoop forming the foundation of the balloon, with 36 small toggles on its upper side to receive the 36 leading lines of the net, and eight large toggles on its underside to receive the eight car lines; M – car lines supporting the car or basket; N – wicker map table attached to the side of the car and projecting outwards; P – grapnel rope (independent of the trail rope on Banshee); R – coir trail rope 300ft long and weighing about 90lb, seen in the form of a bundle, which can be dropped from outside the car and allowed to unravel as it falls; S – the can 6ft 6in long by 5ft 6in wide, and about 3ft 6in high. Also provided were a cone anchor for checking balloon’s speed in the in the event of a descent into the sea, a sea anchor, and a canvas bucket to allow water ballast to be taken up. (AUTHOR)

  Many arrangements were necessary, the race being a long-distance one and the few preli
minaries usually required for an afternoon run would not suffice for a possible two days in the air. First a minute examination of the envelope of the balloon was made both for pin-holes and to see that the ripping panel was in order. This envelope is of cotton with several coats of varnish. Then the net and valves were examined and the car and type of trail rope chosen.

  The car used was the one belonging to my other balloon, the Corona, which although rather small, is very well made and comfortable. The trail ropes were composite, the first a coir rope 100ft long connected to the hoop by 60ft of strong fine rope down which the anchor could slide, and the second 25ft of very thick rope which would float in case of landing on water and known as a ‘serpent’ suspended by 80ft of ½-in rope. The possibility of crossing the sea also necessitated the carrying of life-belts and a waterproof cover to put round the car so that it would float.

  The principal instruments taken were the usual three, the statoscope, the aneroid and the barograph.

  The statoscope is an instrument for telling if you were rising or falling. By pinching the end of a short open rubber tube you enclose air at the pressure at that moment, and the difference of pressure between the inside and outside of this tube due to rising and falling, immediately moves the indicating needle one way or the other. The aneroid is simply the ordinary barometer marked for altitude, while the barograph is also an instrument in common use but with the drum rotating at a greater speed.