"The Balloon-Hoax" is the title now used for a newspaper article written by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844. Originally presented as a true story, it detailed European Monck Mason's trip across the Atlantic Ocean in only three days in a hot air balloon. It was later revealed as a hoax and the story was retracted two days later.

Overview

The story now known as "The Balloon-Hoax" was first printed in the New York Sun newspaper, with the headline:

ASTOUNDING NEWS!

BY EXPRESS VIA NORFOLK:

THE ATLANTIC CROSSED

IN THREE DAYS!

SIGNAL TRIUMPH OF

MR. MONCK MASON'S

FLYING MACHINE!!!

The article went on to provide a detailed and highly plausible account^[1] of a lighter-than-air balloon trip by famous European balloonist Monck Mason across the Atlantic Ocean taking 75 hours, along with a diagram and specifications of the craft.

Poe may have been inspired, at least in part, by a prior journalistic hoax known as the "Great Moon Hoax," published in the same newspaper in 1835. One of the suspected writers of that hoax, Richard Adams Locke, was Poe's editor at the time "The Balloon-Hoax" was published.^[2]

Analysis

"The Balloon-Hoax" is like one of Poe's "tales of ratiocination" (such as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue") in reverse: rather than taking things apart to solve a problem, Poe builds up fiction to make it seem true.^[3]

Critical reception and impact

Poe himself describes the enthusiasm his story had aroused: he claims that the Sun building was "besieged" by people wanting copies of the newspaper. "I never witnessed more intense excitement to get possession of a newspaper," he wrote.^[4] The story's impact reflects on the period's infatuation with progress.^[5]

Publication history

The story was first published on April 13, 1844 in the New York Sun. A retraction concerning the article was printed in The Sun on April 15, 1844:

BALLOON - The mails from the South last Saturday night not having brought a confirmation of the arrival of the Balloon from England, the particulars of which from our correspondent we detailed in our Extra, we are inclined to believe that the intelligence is erroneous. The description of the Balloon and the voyage was written with a minuteness and scientific ability calculated to obtain credit everywhere, and was read with great pleasure and satisfaction. We by no means think such a project impossible.^[6]

The author of this retraction has not been determined and was rumored to be Poe himself.

A facsimile of this article was printed by Clarence S. Brigham, "Poe's 'Balloon Hoax'," The American Book Collector, vol.I, No.2, February 1932, pp.94-5. The facsimile, which appears at the front of the issue, is so reduced in size that only the text of the headline can be read. Mary E. Phillips reprinted the headline and the illustration of "The Victoria" in Edgar Allan Poe the Man, Chicago, 1926, II, pp. 872-3. Mrs. Phillips inadvertently gives the picture of "The Victoria" upside down, with the basket and propeller above the balloon. In her own copy of this book, left to the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and kept in the collection of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Phillips notes this error as one of several corrections for an intended second edition which was never published. The top half of the page containing the article, but not including the picture, is reproduced in Thomas & Jackson, The Poe Log, 1987, p. 459. An article on the hoax was published in the Air & Space Smithsonian magazine in 1993.^[7]

Real trans-oceanic lighter-than-air flights

The first human-carrying lighter-than-air craft of any type to cross the Atlantic was the British dirigible R-34, a direct copy of the German L-33 which crashed in Britain during World War I, in 1919. The 3559.5 mile flight from Britain to New York City took 108 hours 12 minutes.

The first human-carrying unpowered balloon to actually cross the Atlantic Ocean was Double Eagle II from August 11 to 17, 1978. The Pacific was crossed in three days by unmanned Japanese "fire balloons" in 1944.

References

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Poems
Poetry (1824) • O, Tempora! O, Mores! (1825) • Song (1827) • Imitation (1827) • Spirits of the Dead (1827) • A Dream (1827) • Stanzas" (1827) (1827) • Tamerlane (1827) • The Lake (1827) • Evening Star (1827) • A Dream (1827) • To Margaret (1827) • The Happiest Day (1827) • To The River —— (1828) • Romance (1829) • Fairy-Land (1829) • To Science (1829) • To Isaac Lea (1829) • Al Aaraaf (1829) • An Acrostic (1829) • Elizabeth (1829) • To Helen (1831) • A Paean (1831) • The Sleeper (1831) • The City in the Sea (1831) • The Valley of Unrest (1831) • Israfel (1831) • The Coliseum (1833) • Enigma (1833) • Fanny (1833) • Serenade (1833) • Song of Triumph from Epimanes (1833) • Latin Hymn (1833) • To One in Paradise (1833) • Hymn (1835) • Politician (1835) • May Queen Ode (1836) • Spiritual Song (1836) • Bridal Ballad (1837) • To Zante (1837) • The Haunted Palace (1839) • Silence, a Sonnet (1839) • Lines on Joe Locke (1843) • The Conqueror Worm (1843) • Lenore (1843) • Eulalie (1843) • A Campaign Song (1844) • Dream-Land (1844) • Impromptu. To Kate Carol (1845) • To Frances (1845) • The Divine Right of Kings (1845) • Epigram for Wall Street (1845) • The Raven (1845) • A Valentine (1846) • Beloved Physician (1847) • An Enigma (1847) • Deep in Earth (1847) • Ulalume (1847) • Lines on Ale (1848) • To Marie Louise (1848) • Evangeline (1848) • A Dream Within A Dream (1849) • Eldorado (1849) • For Annie (1849) • The Bells (1849) • Annabel Lee (1849) • Alone (1875)
Metzengerstein (1832) • The Duc De L'Omelette (1832) • A Tale of Jerusalem (1832) • Loss of Breath (1832) • Bon-Bon (1832) • MS. Found in a Bottle (1833) • The Assignation (1834) • Berenice (1835) • Morella (1835) • Lionizing (1835) • The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1835) • King Pest (1835) • Shadow - A Parable (1835) • Four Beasts in One - The Homo-Cameleopard (1836) • Mystification (1837) • Silence - A Fable (1837) • Ligeia (1838) • How to Write a Blackwood Article (1838) • A Predicament (1838) • The Devil in the Belfry (1839) • The Man That Was Used Up (1839) • The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) • William Wilson (1839) • The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839) • Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling (1840) • The Business Man (1840) • The Man of the Crowd (1840) • The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) • A Descent into the Maelstrm (1841) • The Island of the Fay (1841) • The Colloquy of Monos and Una (1841) • Never Bet the Devil Your Head (1841) • Eleonora (1841) • Three Sundays in a Week (1841) • The Oval Portrait (1842) • The Masque of the Red Death (1842) • The Landscape Garden (1842) • The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) • The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) • The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) • The Gold-Bug (1843) • The Black Cat (1843) • Diddling (1843) • The Spectacles (1844) • A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844) • The Premature Burial (1844) • Mesmeric Revelation (1844) • The Oblong Box (1844) • The Angel of the Odd (1844) • Thou Art the Man (1844) • The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (1844) • The Purloined Letter (1844) • The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (1845) • Some Words with a Mummy (1845) • The Power of Words (1845) • The Imp of the Perverse (1845) • The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845) • The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845) • The Sphinx (1846) • The Cask of Amontillado (1846) • The Domain of Arnheim (1847) • Mellonta Tauta (1849) • Hop-Frog (1849) • Von Kempelen and His Discovery (1849) • X-ing a Paragrab (1849) • Landor's Cottage (1849)
Other works
Essays: Maelzel's Chess Player (1836) • The Daguerreotype (1840) • The Philosophy of Furniture (1840) • A Few Words on Secret Writing (1841) • The Rationale of Verse (1843) • Morning on the Wissahiccon (1844) • Old English Poetry (1845) • The Philosophy of Composition (1846) • The Poetic Principle (1846) • Eureka (1848) Hoaxes: • The Balloon-Hoax (1844) Novels: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837) • The Journal of Julius Rodman (1840) Plays: Scenes From 'Politian' (1835) Other: The Conchologist's First Book (1839) • The Light-House (1849)