A Doctor Built a Balloon Almost Entirely Out of Paper. Then He Caused the First Aviation Disaster in History.

4 min readHere’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:After the Montgolfier brothers launched the first hot air balloon from Versailles in 1783, much of Europe caught balloon fever, with hundreds of experimenters eager to launch their own.One of these aspiring showmen in Tullamore, Ireland, fashioned a balloon from paper and set it aloft with a straw fire, but it snagged on a chimney and set the entire town of Tullamore on fire.Most of Tullamore was burned down to its foundations, but was eventually rebuilt, which explains the phoenix rising victoriously from ashes and flame on its modern coat of arms. Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier conducted the first public demonstration of a hot air ballon at Annonay, France on June 4, 1783. But the hot air ballon they flew over in the skies over Versailles on September 19, 1783, captivated crowds as it soared overhead for another reason. That balloon was the first to carry living passengers: a sheep named Montauciel, a duck, and a rooster. The Réveillon was stitched together from cotton canvas, which had been reinforced with lavishly printed paper glued onto both sides. Despite magically floating above the palace of Versailles without incident, this novel contraption was also highly flammable.The Montgolfier brothers were fortunate not to have caused a conflagration when they released the Réveillon. To the delight of King Louis XVI, the balloon stayed aloft because of straw burning in a brazier at its mouth, and by some miracle, the flames didn’t ignite the paper covering the balloon’s surface.In the years following the Montgolfier’s 1783 flight, balloon fever spread through Europe, with hot air balloon themes taking over everything from clothing to pocket watches. News of the Montgolfiers’ hot air balloon soon reached Dr. Bleakley, a surgeon at the county infirmary in Tullamore, Ireland, who fancied himself an adventurer. Egged on by a pair of friends, he resolved to build a version of his own.As one of several hundred aspiring showmen throughout Europe to experiment with hot-air balloons, Dr. Bleakley wasn’t the first to attempt replicating the Montgolfier’s stunt, but he was less cautious. His balloon consisted of an envelope made entirely of paper that was attached to a large basket that held a straw fire. On May 10, 1785, nearly two years after the Montgolfiers’ triumph, Bleakley’s unmanned balloon was tethered to the ground, the doctor waiting until enough hot gas had filled the envelope to lift it. Finally, his paper balloon was ready to fly, and he cut the ropes.If there’s one question that still hangs in the air, it’s whether the brazen surgeon had ever considered what could potentially happen when fire, straw, and paper collided. With the a local fair opening that day, people were bustling around Tullamore, and one can be imagine that the balloon caused quite a stir when fairgoers looked up to see the spectacle. Bleakley must have been mesmerized by the sight of his balloon taking off. While he knew the balloon would eventually sink to the ground as the hot air inside its envelope cooled, he failed to consider just how close he might be to any roof-based obstacles that fell in his airborne path.His balloon veered off course, and when it snagged on a chimney, a fire erupted. Flames streaked down to Barrack Street (today called Patrick Street), sending fairgoers scattering and screaming. Some of them made vain efforts to put out the flames, but soon, entire buildings were ablaze, including all but five houses on that street. A local brewery also caught fire and was destroyed.“The utmost distress has been experienced by the miserable inhabitants, whom the remaining houses are scarcely sufficient to afford shelter; and several of the wealthier residents have suffered losses nearly to their total ruin,” a Dublin newspaper reported several days after the incident. “This dreadful calamity rendered more poignant, perhaps from the absurd and dangerous practice from which it proceeded, has overwhelmed this ill-fated town with inconceivable distress and inconvenience.”After the blaze caused by the “fire balloon,” as the paper called it, was finally extinguished, much of Tullamore was a burnt remnant of what it used to be. Townspeople were trying to recover from the shock of the world’s first aerial disaster. While there had been hundreds of other balloon launches, Dr. Bleakley’s was only the third in Ireland, and Hibernian Magazine claimed it had taken down at least a hundred homes by the time the smoke cleared. Barrack Street had to be almost completely rebuilt. An unexpected benefit was that the street could be widened on the south end, which would turn that area into a profitable trading district. Tullamore landlord Charles William Bury also donated an amount that would be worth about $130,000 today to those who’d lost property in the fire, and his generosity was lauded by the Dublin Evening Post.“[Tullamore] was but a very mean village,” historian Charles Coote wrote in his 1801 Survey of King’s County. “With scarce any better than thatched cabins, which were almost all destroyed by accidental fire, occasioned by the launching a balloon, and since has risen, Phoenix-like, from its ashes.”The town’s modern coat of arms features a phoenix for obvious reasons. It had literally risen from ember and ash to become a living town again, and one of the surviving houses is still standing today as De Brún’s Pub on Patrick Street. Following the disaster, businesses thrived. In 2013, a special-edition whiskey was released in memory of the tragedy, which was also honored for years by what else but hot air balloon races. Aeronaut Richard Crosbie had already become the first Irishman to fly by hydrogen balloon that January and lived to tell about it. Why Bleakley hadn’t opted for hydrogen went to the grave with him, but at least his spectacular failure alerted balloonatics about what could happen when fanfare meets a fire hazard.Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.