As they held for some time an unchallenged
monopoly in the manufacture of aircraft for the British Empire, they
have earned the right to a niche in the temple of Fame. They were five
in number--Mrs. Weinling and her elder son Fred, who were the first to
arrive at Chatham, her two daughters, Mary Anne and Eugene, and a
younger son Willie, who was about eighteen years old and was subject to
fits. Their work was carried on not without interruption. In November
1883 Major Templer wrote a letter to the president of the Royal Engineer
Committee, stating that he was delayed in the completion of the skin
balloon by the principal workman having been sentenced to three months'
imprisonment for an assault on the police. As the Weinling family were
the only persons who had ever worked in skin-balloon manufacture, and
as he himself was the only other person acquainted with the art, Major
Templer asked and obtained leave to have two sappers trained to the
work. But this new departure led before long to further troubles. The
family were very jealous of their secret, and when the balloon factory
began to be enlarged it was only with the greatest difficulty that the
members of the family could be induced to give instruction to other
workers.

Nevertheless, in the course of a year, several balloons were made, of
three sizes, the largest size having ten thousand cubic feet of
capacity, and the smaller sizes seven thousand and four thousand five
hundred cubic feet. When, in the autumn of 1884, an expedition was sent
to Bechuanaland under Sir Charles Warren, to expel the filibusters who
had raided the territory, to pacificate the country, and to reinstate
the natives, a balloon detachment under Major Elsdale and Captain F. C.
Trollope, of the Grenadier Guards, attached to the Royal Engineers, was
included in the expedition. They took with them in the detachment three
balloons, and a staff consisting of fifteen non-commissioned officers
and men. There was no fighting. At Mafeking, which was then a native
village, it was found that owing to the elevation above sea-level
neither of the two smaller balloons had lift enough to raise a man into
the air, and that the largest balloon could take up only one observer. A
native chief, Montsiou by name, went up a short distance in the balloon.
The remark that he made serves to show the value of aircraft in
impressing primitive peoples. 'If the first white men', he said, 'who
came into this country had