Bravo Brown!

Along the cemetery’s Sixth Avenue, up from the Jewish Mortuary Chapel, stands a Church of England enclave, now ringed about with the mortal remains of Italians, Greeks and Vietnamese. Today, should you step through the ranks of these graves, and if you search carefully enough, you will come upon a low cement plinth on which is set a small bronzed plaque bearing the following inscription:

Charles Henry Brown

1826–1870

Built Australia’s first balloon Australasian

which made the first manned flight in

Australia, from Richmond to Heidelberg

on 1st February, 1858.

Also his wife Eliza (1825–1898)

and children

Frederick (1850–1968)

Eugene (1854–1875)

This plaque was dedicated on the 22nd May 1994

by the Brown Family, The Balloon Association

of Victoria, Australian Ballooning Federation

and the Aviation Society of Victoria.

Here amongst this magnificent clutter lie the remains of the aeronaut whose correspondence you are about to peruse. There is no trace of any earlier tombstone so, on the face of it, this 1994 memorial is Brown’s valedictory.

* * *

The Australasian was not the first balloon built in the Australian Colonies. Indeed Brown himself never claimed it to be such. The Australasian was built in England and the well-established aeronaut, Henry Coxwell, in his 1887 autobiography, claimed responsibility for the balloon’s construction.

A number of noted balloons predated the Australasian. In Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) during May 1844, ‘Professor’ Rea (the title being self-awarded) constructed a Montgolfier balloon and announced his intention to ascend in this vehicle from Hobart. The Frenchman, Pierre Maigre, declared his intention of making the ‘first balloon ascent in the Australian colonies’ and scheduled it for Monday, 15 December 1856. He proposed to demonstrate his proficiency as an aeronaut, claiming to have successfully flown in France, the United States and the East Indies. His craft, the Sydney Balloon, stood 100 feet high with a circumference of 160 feet. It was also a Montgolfier balloon and was to ascend from Sydney’s Domain. The large vessel managed to rise only a few feet and the enraged spectators, believing themselves victim of a scam, rioted and destroyed the balloon. In the melee a large post used to tether the balloon crashed to the ground killing a young spectator. Bells Life in Sydney and Sporting Review reported the event as being a ‘bare-faced swindle’.

With all this clutter of information to hand it was puzzling as to how the sponsors of the memorial to Brown came to make the claim they did. With my own background in aviation and law, I was not prepared to leave this conundrum sit unexamined and resolved to investigate further.

Brown had inserted a smaller folio at the front of the document, and had inscribed it: Aeronautica – Correspondence of C. H. Brown. With Explanatory Notes etc. The last pages of the document recorded an extensive index. I concluded that the text was not a letter-book in the proper sense of the word. Clearly Brown had prepared and intended Aeronautica for publication; further reading confirmed this view. The manuscript, however, never made it to print, hindered perhaps in part by the fact that in 1838 Monck Mason had produced a popular work which was known to devotees by its main title, Aeronautica.

Among Brown’s letters there are instances of lengthy passages of time without any entered correspondence being entered. Notable family events such as births and deaths pass without record, but perhaps this was only to be expected in a document that evidenced such a singular focus, aeronautics, and was obviously intended for a particular readership.

It is likely however, that Brown did keep a letter-book: there seems to be no other reasonable explanation as to how he was able to reference such a diverse collection of letters from which to compile his Aeronautica. We can therefore presume he managed this compilation of selected extracts from a missing letter-book.

The correspondence covers the period from 1843 through to 1864. Any initial gaps in the letters recorded may well demonstrate that Brown was not aware that some of the correspondences were to blossom into long-term exchanges; or it may reflect nothing more than a young man’s less that assiduous attention of maintaining his letter-book.

We have only a few early biographical details of Brown and, in his Aeronautica, he does little to enlighten the reader as to his youth in Leeds. By reference to other sources we can identify his father, Benjamin Brown, a bookkeeper who married Hannah Higgins in St Peter’s Church, Leeds, in April 1823. The couples’ first child, Edwin, was born in June of the following year, with Charles Henry Brown arriving two years later, though apparently undocumented, registration of births not then being required by law, the task falling to the local clergyman – the matter dependent on his diligence.

Undoubtedly Brown received a sound education, a fact shown by his neat handwriting and his competent use of language. His father intended this son should follow a career as a clerk, ideally in a permanent and pensionable position. However, the young Brown was already in the process of building up an extensive library of aeronautical literature as well as a number of illustrations.

Conquest of the air had been demonstrated by the French brothers, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier. In 1782 they had sent aloft their hot air balloon. The first manned flight followed in 1783. Again it was two pioneer Frenchmen, De Rozier and the Marquis de A’landes, who made that balloon ascent. The title ‘aeronaut’ came to be applied to all such aerial adventurers.