t told of a curious yellow mass,
seemingly flabby and disintegrating like the carcass of a whale,
floating far out at sea.

Her partner ship _La Republique_ had a like tragic end. She too made
many successful trips, and proved her stability and worth. But one
day while manoeuvring near Paris one of her propellers broke and
tore a great rent in her envelope. As the _Titanic_, her hull ripped
open by an iceberg, sunk with more than a thousand of her people, so
this airship, wounded in a more unstable element, fell to the ground
killing all on board.

Two airships were built in France for England in 1909. One, the
_Clement-Bayard II._, was of the rigid type and built for the
government; the other, a _Lebaudy_, was non-rigid and paid for by
popular subscriptions raised in England by the _Morning Post_. Both
were safely delivered near London having made their voyages of
approximately 242 miles each at a speed exceeding forty miles an
hour. These were the first airships acquired for British use.

In the United States the only serious effort to develop the
dirigible prior to the war, and to apply it to some definite
purpose, was made not by the government but by an individual. Mr.
Walter Wellman, a distinguished journalist, fired by the effort of
Andree to reach the North Pole in a drifting balloon, undertook a
similar expedition with a dirigible in 1907. A balloon was built 184
feet in length and 52 feet in diameter, and was driven by a
seventy-to eighty-horse-power motor. A curious feature of this craft
was the guide rope or, as Wellman called it, the equilibrator, which
was made of steel, jointed and hollow. At the lower end were four
steel cylinders carrying wheels and so arranged that they would
float on water or trundle along over the roughest ice. The idea was
that the equilibrator would serve like a guide rope, trailing on the
water or ice when the balloon hung low, and increasing the power of
its drag if the balloon, rising higher, lifted a greater part of its
length into the air. Wellman had every possible appliance to
contribute to the safety of the airship, and many believe that had
fortune favoured him the glory of the discovery of the Pole would
have been his. Unhappily he encountered only ill luck. One season he
spent at Dane's Island, near Spitzenberg whence Andree had set sail,
waiting vainly for favourable weather conditions. The following
summer, just as he was about to start, a fierce storm destroyed hi