ething always seemed to go wrong at the last minute,
and the flight had to be postponed.

At last, in 1905, the first ascent took place. It was unsuccessful. The
huge balloon, made of tussore silk, cruised about for some time, then
drifted away with the breeze, and came to grief in landing.

A clever inventor of air-ships, a young Welshman, Mr. E. T. Willows,
designed in 1910, an air-ship in which he flew from Cardiff to London
in the dark--a distance of 139 miles. In the same craft he crossed the
English Channel a little later.

Mr. Willows has a large shed in the London aerodrome at Hendon, and he
is at present working there on a new air-ship. For some time he has been
the only successful private builder of air-ships in Great Britain. The
Navy possess a small Willows air-ship.

Messrs. Vickers, the famous builders of battleships, are giving
attention to the construction of air-ships for the Navy, in their works
at Walney Island, Barrow-in-Furness. This firm has erected an enormous
shed, 540 feet long, 150 feet broad, and 98 feet high. In this shed two
of the largest air-ships can be built side by side. Close at hand is an
extensive factory for the production of hydrogen gas.

At each end of the roof are towers from which the difficult task of
safely removing an air-ship from the shed can be directed.

At the time of writing, the redoubtable DORA (Defence of the Realm Act)
forbids any but the vaguest references to what is going forward in the
way of additions to our air forces. But it may be stated that air-ships
are included in the great constructive programme now being carried
out. It is not long since the citizens of Glasgow were treated to the
spectacle of a full-sized British "Zep" circling round the city prior to
her journey south, and so to regions unspecified. And use, too, is being
found by the naval arm for that curious hybrid the "Blimp", which may be
described as a cross between an aeroplane and an air-ship.

CHAPTER VIII. The First Attempts to Steer a Balloon

For nearly a century after the invention of the Montgolfier and Charlier
balloons there was not much progress made in the science of aeronautics.
True, inventors such as Charles Green suggested and carried out new
methods of inflating balloons, and scientific observations of great
importance were made by balloonists both in Britain and on the
Continent. But in the all-important work of steering the huge craft,
progress was for many years