From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 14:35:32 -0500
Archived: Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:01:58 -0500
Subject: Re: Military Fliers - Flying One-Man Platforms


>From: Martin Shough <parcellular.nul>
>To: <post.nul>
>Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 20:05:36 -0000
>Subject: Re: Military Fliers - Flying One-Man Platforms

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <post.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 10:45:52 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Military Fliers - Flying One-Man Platforms

>>>From: Martin Shough <parcellular.nul>
>>>To: <post.nul>
>>>Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 11:26:53 -0000
>>>Subject: Re: Military Fliers - Flying One-Man Platforms

>>>>From: Terry Colvin <fortean1.nul>
>>>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
>>>>Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 23:56:40 +0700 (GMT+07:00)
>>>>Subject: Military Fliers - Flying One-Man Platforms

>>>A Texas newspaper in 1897 published an account of an airship
>>>that had been seen by people on their way home from church. It
>>>was too high to see more than a strange shape with lights but it
>>>was trailing an an anchor on a rope which caught on a railroad
>>>track, and a man "small in size" in a light blue uniform or
>>>"sailor suit" shinned down the rope, cut it, and the thing
>>>sailed away. The churchgoers recovered the anchor and it went
>>>on display in the local blacksmith's shop.

>>>The 13thC Irish 'Speculum Regale' has an account of a ship in
>>>the sky whose anchor caught in the porch of St Kineras church,
>>>Cloera. A man came down the rope looking as though "swimming"
>>>in the air and the churchgoers tried to grab him but the bishop
>>>said to let him go. He scurried back up and cut the rope. The
>>>anchor was kept and displayed in the church.

>>This isn't much of a mystery, Martin. A few April 1897 papers
>>noted the medieval legend. Shortly thereafter, some enterprising
>>Texas correspondent incorporated the tale into a contemporary
>>airship sighting.

>I entirely accept that the Houston Post story reflects a
>journalist's recognition of some resonance between the 1897
>airships and the mediaeval cloudships. I'd supposed this was
>possible, and I'm interested that you say there were specific
>references made to the mediaeval stories in April 1897. I hadn't
>seen these sources.

From my UFO Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (1998), page 60:

"This oddly compelling tale led even so cautious a scholar as
the prominent British folklorist Katharine Briggs to remark,
'This strange early space-men story...  shows some glimmering of
scientific knowledge about the relative density of the air near
the earth. It is one of those strange, unmotivated and therefore
rather convincing tales that are scattered through the early
chronicles'... Nonetheless, there is nothing eerie or
significant about the apparent repetition in small-town Texas
centuries later. It is now known that Gervase's account was
reprinted in American newspapers in the spring of 1897 (see, for
example, the Taylorville [Illinois] Daily Breeze, April 17),
providing the hoaxer (probably the author of the Houston Daily
Post story) with a model from which he or she deviated only
slightly (even identifying the witnesses as worshippers leaving
a church) in producing an 1897 version."

Since writing the above, I've come upon other examples of
Gervase of Tilbury's account reprinted in the press of the
period.

>Nevertheless, the fact that it occurred to journalists to
notice >and exploit this resonance between modern and mediaeval
stories >of manned ships in the air trailing anchors/grapples
(the Merkel >story is not the only one of that sort from 1897)
still >interests me, because it does not really, by itself,
satisfy my >curiosity about the synchronistic "mystery" I
mentioned, and >indeed even remains - despite the availability
of a >deterministic account - an instance of it.

The only other account of an airship anchor, or anchorlike
device, that comes to mind is one from Iowa, where a man named
Robert Hibbard allegedly was dragged by one. I've always had my
doubts about that report, based not so much on anything specific
as on the sort of instinct one develops after years of studying
these accounts, a significant percentage of which are fictional.
I could be wrong, of course, and it's pretty certain that we'll
never know with confidence one way or another.

Anyway, if you have other examples, Martin, I'd be interested in
seeing what they are.


Cordially,

Jerry Clark