Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Gas
Bag of Courage
(The Balloonist, 8/13/07)
By Nicholas Nicastro
The
Balloonist. By Stephen Poleskie
(338 pp., Frederic C. Beil Publishers, $24.95)
It
is often said that journalists write the first draft of history. Thaddeus
Lowe, the pioneering inventor and aviator, was perhaps the first notable
exception to this rule. Rising in his silk balloon over the killing
fields of the Civil War, Lowe instantly got a breadth of perspective—a
sense of who, what, and where on a grand scale—that was previously
limited to scholars of great and tragic events. "To the right could
be seen the York River, following which the eye could rest of Chesapeake
Bay. On the left, and at about the same distance, flowed the James River..."
wrote one of Lowe's most notorious passengers, George Armstrong Custer.
"Between these two extended a most beautiful landscape, and no
less interesting than beautiful; it being made a theatre of operations
of armies larger and more formidable than had ever confronted each other
on his continent before..."
With The Balloonist: The Story
of T.S.C. Lowe—Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father
of the US Air Force, Ithaca-based writer Stephen Poleskie offers
up what is perhaps the most gratifying kind of biography—one that
convinces us that its subject is so manifestly significant that the
absence of previous books about him seems downright mystifying. As hinted
in the subtitle, Lowe (1832-1913) was something of an industrial alchemist,
a restless polymath who contrived innovations in fields as disparate
as chemistry, engineering, meteorology, espionage, and roadshow razzmatazz.
His antebellum "magic" shows, staged under the assumed title
of "Professor" Lowe, were more scientific lecture/demonstrations
than the kind of portentous dinner theatre practiced by his modern descendants.
Yet they were also very popular, making him not only a pioneering inventor
but the Science Guy of his times.
Lowe's lifetime passion, however,
was the delicate craft of ballooning. Conceiving the then-outrageous
plan to cross the Atlantic by air, he worked steadily to improve the
technology and public profile of lighter-than-air aviation. The advent
of the Civil War undercut public support for such adventures, but not
Lowe's enthusiasm: if balloons could cross oceans, they certainly could
be used to erase the front lines between armies. Along with a handful
of rivals, Lowe labored hard to get Union generals to appreciate the
potential of hydrogen balloons for intelligence-gathering.
It took the intercession of Lincoln
himself to finally get the US Army Balloon Corps off the ground. Rising
above the battlefields of Virginia, Lowe became a unique witness to
some of the most momentous battles in the war, including George McClellan's
ill-fated Peninsula campaign. He became the first to supply real-time
intelligence from the air when he conceived the notion of stringing
a telegraph wire from his gondola. As his custom-built observation balloon
floated above the trees, he also became the most shot-at man in the
war, as Confederate sharpshooters and gunners attempted to erase the
Union intelligence advantage by blasting him out of the sky. That Lowe
exposed himself to such danger for more than two years as a civilian
contractor, without commission or regular salary, is not the least of
his miracles.
Poleskie tells his story with a
rare combination of practical expertise (the author is an aviator himself),
empathy, and poetic vividness. Describing Lowe's lingering horror at
the carnage he witnessed, Poleskie writes "A violent spasm twitched
his body. Once again he heard the boundless roar of cannon; saw the
shattered bodies and the collapsing bridges; listened to the clumsy,
gasping cries of drowning men; and the agonizing shriek of the wounded.
Riderless horses wallowed in the mud along the banks snorting flames
from their nostrils. Corpses, swollen to twice their size, ground out
curses and blasphemies from their bloated mouths as they floated on
the spume. Summoned by he did not know what, the whole ghastly parade
assembled around him, marching skyward, a relentless invasion of his
senses."
The Balloonist is full of
similar, fictionalized passages, many of which are quite fine. Indeed,
Poleskie is not alone in mixing the roles of historian and novelist—the
bookstore shelves are lately full of similar hybrids. More literal-minded
readers may chaff at this approach, however: it is occasionally nice
to know which fine reflection or turn-of-phrase originates with the
author, and which from Lowe's own memoirs (published only in 2004).
Other strange omissions, such as a single likeness of Lowe, or an index
(though Poleskie does provide a bibliography) may also frustrate the
conventional reader.
Compelling as Lowe's story is, the
notion that balloon reconnaissance alone could have shortened the Civil
War is arguably wishful thinking. Though Lowe did work wonders in that
brief time before bureaucratic infighting finally drove him away, one
senses that the skein of determined stupidity enveloping the Union general
staff would have squandered any advantage. Indeed, one of the unanticipated
dividends of Poleskie's book is to put the current trail of miscues
in Iraq in historical perspective. If anything is as perennial as war
itself, it's the quality of the foolishness it seems to attract.
©2007 Nicholas Nicastro
back to Culture Blog