A balloon ride at Woodward’s Garden

Eyes glittering with excitement, old-timers tell you about the exciting balloon ascensions that used to thrill the weekend crowds at Woodward’s Gardens, or at the Beach. But ask them if they ever took a ride in one and can tell you what it was like, and they shake their heads no, laughing nervously at the thought, even though they are 60 or 70 years removed from balloon rides.

When you find out what could happen to the willing-totry-anything-once types who went for balloon ascensions, you can understand why the idea, even now, sets the oldtimers crying for another whisky to steady their nerves. Here is the story of an ascension that took place one quiet Saturday afternoon at Woodward’s Gardens in April, 1874.

Captain G. Barbier, the daring French balloonist, spent the morning inflating his monster of the air with 60,000 feet of gas. At about 1:30 p.m., while the crowds gaped, he and six passengers climbed into the basket beneath the gasbag and sat down. The passengers were Miss Marie Gaugain, a danseuse of local note; 16-year-old Miss Alice Burrington, August Buislay, William Marriott, H. Guisoulaphe and Joseph Irwin, a writer for the Golden Era.

Also on board were stowed a carrier pigeon and hampers containing sandwiches and several bottles of Veuve Clicquot.

At 3:46, with the carrier pigeon trembling like a leaf, Captain Barbier shouted dramatically, “All hands let go!” and the balloon rose like a gigantic soap bubble and quickly attained an altitude of 6000 feet. A westerly breeze caught it and wafted it leisurely to Hunter’s Point and out over the bay.

With the ascension over and surveying the panorama below them from their swaying basket, the passengers relaxed. Gaily, they uncorked the champagne, toasted the gasbag and man’s conquest of gravity, and threw the bottles over the side. Then they wrote a note, which said jocularly, “Tell our friends we died happy.” They tied this to the pigeon’s leg and threw him over the side.

What happened next cast a pall over the party. The pigeon, who had had no champagne and who had obviously been terrified from the moment he got into the basket, did not speed unerringly back to Woodward’s Gardens. Instead it circled uncertainly about the balloon as if dazed. Then it flopped over and over in the air, and finally splashed into the bay. Sobered by this curious turn of events, the passengers told Captain Barbier they wanted him to take them home.

This was easier asked than granted. The wind had blown the balloon across the bay, and it was now skimming inland west of Alameda at about 1600 feet. It was traveling at an estimated 60 miles an hour, when, to the passengers’ horror, Captain Barbier opened some gas valves and warned them to prepare for the descent. At this point, the passengers began to lose confidence in the intrepid balloon man.

“Are you mad?” cried Buislay. “If we land at this rate of speed we shall all perish.”

This was apparently a new thought to Barbier. He turned off the valves and hastily jettisoned four bags of ballast. The balloon shot up 700 feet and sailed over Alameda. As ... the balloon approached San Leandro, the captain again released some gas and got ready for a landing.

Two miles east of San Leandro, he threw out of the basket an anchor at the end of 100 feet of rope. The anchor dragged on the ground for an eighth of a mile, caught on a fence, tore the fence apart, dragged another eighth of a mile and hooked a shanty occupied by one Murrillo. There was a great rending and splitting of wood as the anchor lifted off the shanty roof. The anchor rope snapped. Rocking crazily in its sudden release, the balloon lurched 400 feet into the air and then, with a screaming rip, split from top to bottom.

As the torn bag and the basket slanted rapidly earthward, the passengers huddled in terror on the basket floor. The basket struck the ground heavily and turned over. Still containing gas, the collapsing bag bounced, dragged the basket another 300 yards, and came to rest in the front yard of the Alameda County Hospital.

Hospital attendants ... rushed to the basket, cut it loose from the balloon, lifted it up and were confronted by a groaning tangle of arms, legs, heads and bodies, hats, coats, sandwiches, lunch boxes, sandbags and rope. At the very bottom of the heap was the only uninjured excursionist, Miss Gaugain.

Captain Barbier was carried right into the hospital with a broken leg. The rest, with the exception of the lucky Miss Gaugain, were also helped inside for treatment. Marriott for head cuts, Buislay for bruises, Miss Burrington for scratches on her face, Guisoulaphe for severe bruises of the head and chest, and Irwin for the loss of four false teeth.

So if you wanted to live to be an old-timer, you stayed out of balloons; and if there are any of them around who think that’s the way to spend a Saturday afternoon, they can have it. I’ll stay right here.

With the ascension over and surveying the panorama below them from their swaying basket, the passengers relaxed.