mysterious airships of the 1890s

[Robert]

I got fed up, plus had to go to bed, last night with Jim Marrs on talking about, among other things, some incidents of the mysterious airship flap of the 1890s in North America.  The handling of the evidence of these cases has long bothered me.  On one hand, they're cited by UFOlogists as early evidence of travelers from outer space.  OTOH, they're treated by debunkers as hoaxes.  What I think is just that they were just the phenomenon they were reported at the time to be: test flights of actual dirigible lighter-than-air craft.  Not from outer space, but from Americans; not entirely figments of people's imagination, either.

Both ETH proponents and debunkers (and of course Jim Marrs) seize on some of the most unreliable reports from the time as evidence that the things in question could not have been what they seemed.  Reports of great speed (of which dirigible balloons are not capable) have been inferred from 2 sources.  One is ground observers who were not part of the project in question, who were naïve, and therefore in no position to judge the speed of such an aerial object.  The other is reports of the craft as being at one location & then another; the explanation there is simple: reports conflating two different craft as one having covered all that distance.

Of course there were hoax reports too, many of which were not expected to be taken seriously.  And the word from the fliers themselves, who were interested in maintaining as much as possible of their commercial secrets, was unreliable.

Of course Jim Marrs just takes the most far-fetched interpret'n of the evidence, saying that because a navigator is said to have been from Mars, he really was.  And that the story about one such aerial navigator's stated intention of bombarding Cuba must've been from a time traveler, because who could have known about the next year's Spanish-American War?  First of all, that report was among the most unreliable and ridiculed.  Second, it's not as if the war could not have been anticipated, because at that time, there were many people in the USA advocating just such a war against the Spanish regime in Cuba.  (Had the Philippines been mentioned, that might've been more interesting.)  In fact the report might have been intended to satirize just such war mongering.

So I did some searching today, and found that there are indeed others who interpret the evidence as I do, i.e. the most straightforward, obvious way.

[zeebo]

Did you catch OSOM last nite?  Guest W. Bosley had a theory wihch suggests airship tech may actually go back to the 1850's.  Interesting show if you can get ahold of it.

[Beelzebubbelah]

...W. Bosley had a theory which suggests airship tech may actually go back to the 1850's...

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'Allo!
with you am i yet.
i have avoided most discussions of this topic because i did some research upon this in the 1960's..
my records are in storage,und zo this is an scatter-shot round-up of my thoughts then.
one really cogent skein involved middle ages accounts describeing wonders from 'cloud-ships' that sailed the empyrean like the flying dutchman.
Usually associated with fairy beings.
Many descriptions of yokels and monks,etc.seeing these ships with visible crews of humanoid fairy-like beings.
Descriptions of these events seemed to be mostly similar to nautical vessals of that time.
other kinds of accounts describe very different phenomena in the sky that seem like modern machines or comets,asteroids,meteors,or outright illusions like fata morgana,sun-or-moon dogs.
Not the recent kinds of interpretations and seeming better observation than one would expect.
Chas. Fort did an massive search for these reports.
So has Jaqques Vallee and his fans.
Most books just cut-n-paste without attribution from people like Corliss.
i pursuaded am that this field has little to do with modern inventors.
"B_B"
PS:No Logo:
[7VF]

[zeebo]

... middle ages accounts describeing wonders from 'cloud-ships' that sailed the empyrean like the flying dutchman.
Usually associated with fairy beings.

Interesting stuff as usual Beelz.  Hope more research is being done on this.