Sophie Blanchard

Image of Sophie Blanchard making her ascent in Milan in 1811.

Sophie Blanchard (25 March 1778-6 July 1819) was a French aeronaut. The widow of famous balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard, she was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist. Known throughout Europe for her ballooning exploits, she entertained Napoleon Bonaparte, who made her his Chief Air Minister, and Louis XVIII, who named her "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration".

She became the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident when the gas in her balloon was ignited by fireworks that she was launching during an exhibition in Paris. She is commonly referred to as Madame Blanchard and also known as Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Marie Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Marie Sophie Armant and Madeleine-Sophie Armant Blanchard.

Biography

Early career

Sophie Blanchard was born Marie Madeleine-Sophie Armant at Trois-Canons, near La Rochelle.

In 1804, at 26, she became the second wife of Jean-Pierre Blanchard, the world's first professional balloonist. Blanchard had abandoned his first wife, Victoire Lebrun and their four children to travel round Europe giving demonstrations of ballooning, and she had died in poverty. Variously described as Blanchard's "small, ugly, nervous wife", "small with sharp bird-like features" and later as "small and beautiful", Sophie was apparently more at home in the sky than on the ground, where her nervous disposition meant she was easily startled. The shock caused by witnessing an accident involving her husband, in which he crashed and sustained a head injury, apparently left her mute for a while. She was terrified of loud noises and riding in carriages, but was fearless in the air. She made her first ascent in a balloon with Blanchard in the year they were married; due to Blanchard's poor business sense the couple were facing bankruptcy and they believed a female balloonist was a novelty that might attract enough attention to solve their financial problems. She made a second ascent with Blanchard and for her third ascent in 1805 she flew solo.

She was not the first woman balloonist: on 20 May 1784, the Marchioness and Countess of Montalembert, the Countess of Podenas and a Miss de Lagarde had taken a trip on tethered balloon in Paris. Neither was she the first woman to ascend in an untethered balloon: In Blanchard's time, Citizen Henry, who had made an ascent with André-Jacques Garnerin in 1798, was widely credited with that ballooning first, although the honour actually belonged to Elizabeth Thible who had made an ascent 14 years before Citizen Henry on 4 June 1784. Blanchard was, however, the first woman to pilot her own balloon and the first to adopt ballooning as a career.

In 1809, her husband died from injuries sustained when he fell from his balloon in the Hague after suffering a heart attack. After his death, Sophie continued to make ascents, specialising in night flights, often staying aloft all night.

Later career

Ascent from the Champ de Mars, 1810

As her husband had done, she conducted experiments with parachutes, launching puppies from her balloon, and as part of her entertainments she would launch fireworks, and drop baskets of pyrotechnics attached to small parachutes. Other aeronauts were making a name for themselves demonstrating parachutes with jumps from balloons, in particular Élisa Garnerin, the niece of André-Jaques Garnerin and Blanchard's rival as a female aeronaut. Blanchard may have given some demonstrations herself, but her primary interest was in ballooning.

She and Blanchard had still been in debt at the time of his death, and in order to minimise her expenses she was as frugal as possible in her choice of balloon. She used a hydrogen-filled gas balloon, as it allowed her to ascend in a basket little bigger than a chair, and meant that there was no requirement for the volume of material that would have been necessary in a hot air balloon. A hydrogen balloon had the additional advantage of not requiring her to tend a fire to keep the craft airborne.

She became a favourite of Napoleon and he appointed her as his Chief Air Minister of Ballooning to replace André-Jacques Garnerin in 1804, after Garnerin had disgraced himself by failing to control the balloon in which he had ascended to mark Napoleon's coronation in Paris. She is reported to have drawn up plans for an airborne balloon invasion in Europe. She made ascents for Napoleon's entertainment on 24 June 1810 from the Champ de Mars in Paris, at the celebration mounted by the Imperial Guard for his marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria, and again at the "Féte de l’Emperor" in Milan on 15 August 1811. On the birth of Napeoleon's son, Blanchard took a balloon flight over Paris throwing out leaflets proclaiming the birth. She also delighted Louis XVIII on his restoration to the French throne in 1814 and was dubbed "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration".

She was known throughout Europe and would draw large crowds for her ascents. In Frankfurt she was apparently the cause of the poor reception Carl Maria von Weber's opera Silvana received on its opening night on 16 September 1810: the people of the city flocked out to see her demonstration while few attended the first performance of Weber's work. She gave many displays in Italy. In 1811 she travelled from Rome to Naples, splitting the journey in half with a stop after 60 miles (97 km), and ascending to a height of 12,000 feet (3660 m) where she claimed that she slept for a while. In the same year she lost consciousness after having to ascend to avoid being trapped in a hail storm near Vincennes and spent 14½ hours in the air. She crossed the Alps by balloon, suffering a nose bleed because of the altitude, and almost drowned in 1817 when she mistook a flooded field as a safe landing spot. Sympathising with Marie Thérèse de Lamourous who was attempting to run a shelter for the homeless in Bordeaux, she offered to donate the proceeds from one of her ascents to the venture. De Lamourous refused the offer though on the grounds that she could not be the cause of another risking their life.

Death

"Death of Mme. Blanchard"; illustration from the late 19th Century.

On 6 July 1819, while making an ascent to start a display over the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, her hydrogen-filled balloon caught fire and, entangled in the net which surrounded it, she fell to her death.

Blanchard had regularly performed at the Tivoli Gardens, making ascents twice a week when she was in Paris, but she was reported as being unusually nervous before starting the ascent. Apparently she had been warned repeatedly of the danger of using fireworks in her exhibitions. This display was to be particularly impressive with a great many more pyrotechnics than normal, and it appears that the warnings had made an impression on her. She was urged not to make the ascent by some spectators, but others, eager to see the show, urged her on. One report suggested that she finally made up her mind and stepped into her chair with the words "Allons, ce sera pour la deniere fois" ("Right, this will be for the last time").

At sometime between 9 and 10.30 pm (accounts differ as to the exact time) she began her ascent. The wind was blowing strongly, and it appears the balloon brushed through the trees as it ascended. Blanchard began the display, letting off fireworks and dropping baskets filled with "Bengal fire".

A few moments after beginning the display and while still ascending the balloon was seen to be in flames. Some reports say that the balloon momentarily disappeared behind a cloud and when it reappeared it was on fire, but whatever the circumstances, the gas in the balloon was burning. Blanchard began to descend slowly. The balloon had not risen very high and although the escaping gas was burning, the gas within the balloon maintained sufficient lift for a while to prevent the craft plummeting directly to the ground. By rapidly shedding ballast Blanchard was able to slow the descent. Most reports say she appeared to be calm during the descent, but she was reported to be wringing her hands in despair as the craft approached the ground.

Just above the rooftops of the Rue de Provence the gas from the balloon was exhausted, and the craft stuck the the roof of number 15. The ropes holding the chair to the body of the balloon may have burnt through, or the impact thrown her from the chair, resulting in Blanchard pitching over the side of the roof into the street. The balloon descended slowly, and it was thought that she would have survived if it had not struck , Rue de Provence and pitched her out of the basket into the street below.

There was a terrible pause, then Mme Blanchard caught up in the netting of her balloon, fell with a crash upon the slanting roof of a house in the Rue de Provence, and then into the street, where she was taken up a shattered corpse.

One report credits her with crying out "A moi!" as she struck the roof. Although the crowds rushed to her assistance and attempts were made to save her, she died ten minutes later from a broken neck.

It appeared that fireworks that were attached to her balloon had been knocked out of position by a tree as she ascended, and when she had lit the fuses they headed towards the balloon instead of away from it burning a hole in the fabric and igniting the gas. One man had apparently spotted the problem and shouted to her not to light the fuses, but was drowned out by the cheering of the crowd. Later reports suggested she had left the gas valve open allowing sparks to ignite the gas and set fire to the balloon, or that her balloon was of poor construction and allowed gas to escape throughout the ascent.

In total, she had made between 65 and 67 balloon ascents. An immediate appeal to the citizens of Paris for donations raised 2,400 francs, and a memorial (topped with a representation of her balloon in flames) was erected for her in the cemetery of Père Lachaise. Though not rich, at the the time of her death she had cleared the debts left to her by her husband, and was financially secure. In her will she left property worth 50,000 francs.

The story of her death was recounted throughout Europe. Jules Verne mentioned her in Five Weeks in a Balloon and in The Gambler Dostoevsky likened the thrill of committing oneself in gambling to the sensation that Blanchard must have felt as she fell. For others, her death proved a cautionary tale, either as an example of a woman exceeding her station (as Grenville Mellen put it "A woman in a balloon is either out of her element or too high in it") or as the price of vanity in attempting such spectacular shows. Charles Dickens commented "The jug goes often to the well, but is pretty sure to get cracked at last". With the advent of powered flight, ballooning and Blanchard's story were relegated to the sidelines. A novel inspired by Blanchard's story, entitled The Little Balloonist, written by Linda Donn was published in 2006.

References

• Dickens, Charles (1853). "Household Words: A Weekly Journal". 7. New York: Dix and Edwards. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Dwiggens, Don (1973). Riders of the Winds: The Story of Ballooning. New York: Hawthorn Books.
• Harrison, James Pickney (2000). Mastering the Sky: A History of Aviation from Ancient Times to the Present. Combined Publishing,U.S. p. 392. ISBN 1885119682.
• Lynn, Michael R. (2006). Popular Science And Public Opinion in Eighteenth-century France. Manchester University Press. p. 177. ISBN 0719073731.
• Martin, J (2000). The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics. Harper Collins. p. 466. ISBN 0813368057.
• Michaud, Louis Gabriel (1854). Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne (in French). C. Desplaces. p. 700.
• Oettinger, Edouard-Marie (1850). Bibliographie Biographique.
• Saunders, Frederick (1853). Salad for the Solitary. Lamport, Blakeman and Law. p. 284.
• Shayler, David J. (2005). Women in Space - Following Valentina. Springer. p. 410. ISBN 1852337443.
• Smucker, Samuel Mosheim (1857). Memorable Scenes in French History: From the Era of Cardinal Richelieu to the Present Time. Miller, Orten, and Co. p. 385.
• Walker, Mike (2004). Powder Puff Derby: Petticoat Pilots and Flying Flappers. Wiley. p. 304. ISBN 0470851414.
• Wason, Charles William (1897). Annual Register. Baldwin, Cradock and Joy.
• Whitworth, Robert. "Flights of Fancy". Prints George. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
• "History of Ballooning". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
• "Abstract of Foreign Occurences". Gentleman's Magazine. 1819.

External links

• WOMEN IN FLIGHT: Balloons, Parachutes, Airplanes, and the Search for Equity. Presentation by John H. Lienhard, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Houston.

Template:Persondata