"Upon Dec.10, 1881, Walter Powell and two companions ascended from Bath in the Government balloon Saladin (Valentine and Tompson, Travels in Space, p.227). The balloon descended at Bridport, coast of the English Channel. Two of the aeronauts got out, and the balloon, with Powell in it, shot upward. There was a report that the balloon had been seen to fall in the English Channel, near Bridport, but according to Capt.Temple, one of Powell's companions, probably something thrown from the balloon had been seen to fall. A balloon is lost near or over the sea. If it should fall into the sea it would probably float and for a considerable time be a conspicuous object; nevertheless, the disappearance of a balloon last seen over the English Channel, cannot, without other circumstances, be considered very mysterious. Now one expects to learn of reports from many places of supposed balloons that had been seen. But the extraordinary circumstance is that reports came in upon a luminous object that was seen in the sky at the time that the balloon disappeared. In the London Times, it is said that a luminous object had been seen, evening of the 13th, moving in various directions in the sky near Cherbourg. It is said that upon the night of the 16th, three customhouse guards, at Laredo, Spain, had seen something like a balloon in the sky, and had climbed a mountain in order to see it better, but that it had shot out sparks and had disappeared--- and had been reported from Bilbao, Spain, the next day. In the Morning Post, it is said that this luminous display was the chief feature; that it was this sparkling that had made the object visible. In the Standard, December 16, is an account of something that was seen in the sky, five o'clock, morning of December 15, by Capt.McBain, of the steamship Countess of Aberdeen, off the coast of Scotland, 25 miles from Montrose. Through glasses, the object seemed to be a light attached to something thought to be the car of a balloon, increasing and decreasing in size---a large light---'as large as the light at Girdleness.' (Pages 461-462)

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