Steam City Pirates (5 page)

As we walked up the stairs to return to the basement of Temple Emanu-El, I turned around and asked Doctor Adler, “By the way, Doctor, what does “Emanu-El mean?”

Doctor Adler smiled up at me. “It means ‘God is with us,’” he said.

I returned his smile, “Let’s hope He is,” I admitted, as we stepped into the light of Doctor Adler’s office to the awaiting smile of Missus Schwartz.

Chapter 2: Our Heroes are Visited with Balloons and a Complication with Don Carlos

Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe was now retired to a farm in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the site of the Continental Army’s winter campaign headquarters. I was on a train from New York to meet the professor at his home. I wanted to find out about what he knew concerning ballooning, and I also hoped he could provide me with the latest details regarding the military science of these craft and how they might assist me in my effort to thwart the future balloon pirates.

I rented a hackney in Philadelphia near the train station and drove it the twenty miles of dirt roads until I reached Lowe’s farm near the Schuylkill River. There were abundant forests in the area, and as I approached his farm, I noted that his main house, barn and farmhand quarters were all made from large logs that could fortify the buildings from the harsh winters in the area.

Professor Lowe was still a scientist and inventor, so I was able to telegraph ahead to inform him about my visit. He had his own telegraph machine and a laboratory where he was working on his latest discoveries in hydrogen enriched gas.

I saw him and his lovely wife, Leontine, waiting for me in front of their large farmhouse. Their seven daughters and three sons stood in military formation behind their parents. They all wore the clothes of the rural life, suspendered trousers, flannel shirts, gingham dresses and long boots. I felt rather conspicuous in my city frock coat, although I decided not to wear a tie, and my porkpie hat made me appear somewhat less metropolitan.

“O’Malley! It’s so good to see you. My family and I are quite flattered to have a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient in our humble home,” said Lowe as he expertly unhitched my horse and led it by the reins to his red barn. “My workers are in town, so I must do the honors,” he explained. “How was your trip from New York?”

The professor waved to his family, including his wife, and they all scattered about to do their usual chores. I imagined living on a farm as being quite time-consuming. Some say that city life makes you into the same hustling and bustling entity that the employees in the factories and stores become, but when I see people running off with milk buckets and chicken feed, I believe they have succumbed to some primeval call of Nature, and it astounds me every time.

Thaddeus Lowe, however, was still an inventor and scientist at heart, and he was eager to discuss technical matters with me. As soon as my horse was eating hay in the barn, he quickly escorted me into his private shed adjacent to the farmhouse. This was his “laboratory,” and it was filled with the usual tools that a chemist and engineer must possess in order to discover the world of scientific innovation.

As I followed him into his work space, Professor Lowe immediately took me on a tour of his latest project. Over on a bench was a large mechanical device with three chambers. Alongside, in a large bucket, was a heap of coal. Lowe picked up a metal scoop lying upon the coal pile and shoveled some coal into the first chamber. “If I can, I want to develop a way to heat our homes and illuminate them with a water gas process by which high volumes of volatile fuel can be made by passing steam over hot coal. I will now pour this coal into the generator where it will be heated by the primary combustion from an air blast. See? The warmth of the primary combustion heats the coal sufficiently, while the air gas is burned by a second air blast in the other two chambers in which the oil for carbureting is decomposed. These chambers contain a quantity of loose fire brick called ‘checker work,’ and the air gas is burned in them during the time the air blast is on in the main producer. Now, we can see that the coal and checker work are hot enough, so I will shut off the air blast and turn on the steam blast,” said Lowe, pushing a lever on top of the middle chamber. The hot air stopped rushing through the carburetor.

“Can we discuss the balloons now?” I asked.

“One moment. What I am showing you could apply to your inquiry in more ways than just ballooning. I shall now turn on the steam blast,” said the professor, and he turned another lever, which sent a rush of steam pouring into the third chamber. “Look here. Heat stored in the checker work material pyrolyzes the mixture of water gas and oil, which is led through the chambers while the steam blast is pouring over the producers. My process is endothermic, which means it cools the generator and checker, so the process must alternate between air blast for heating and steam blast for gas production.”

“This fuel can be used for both heating and illumination?” I took a seat in a chair next to his work bench.

“That’s correct. If all goes according to my plans, I can also use this process to create ammonia for refrigeration. Can you imagine a better way for food to be transported so people out West can enjoy fresh meat that does not need to be salted?”

Professor Lowe sat down on the padded seat of what looked to be a mechanical wheat thresher standing against the wall nearby. “This thresher has an engine fueled by my hydrogen-enriched gas. There is no toxic exhaust, and it ignites much more efficiently than other fuels.”

“That is quite illuminating,” I said, smiling at my pun, “but we were going to discuss my problem with hot air balloon pirates and the possibility of submersibles attacking merchant ships. I have intelligence from the War Department that has given me warnings about certain terrorists who might exploit these devices to their advantage. I have been employed to find out a way to counter their efforts. It is difficult to counter something unless one knows the science behind the adversary’s device. That is why I came to you.”

Professor Lowe smiled beneath his handsome mustache. He took out a match stick and probed the space between his two front teeth. “You want to build a better balloon. Is that it?”

“Yes, and I would appreciate it if you could continue to counsel us if and when these pirates strike. You are the only person who knows how to maneuver these balloons in battle. As an Army man, I am well aware of the need to exploit the weaknesses of the enemy whenever possible,” I said.

“It seems a bit strange that the government wants me to assist them. My Balloon Corps was designated as a private contractor during the war, and we were never officially accepted into its military ranks. Yes, I had a commission from Lincoln as an officer and aeronaut, but if any of my employees had been captured by the enemy, they would have been executed as spies!” Lowe frowned. “I was also run out of the Army because the other officers thought I was being paid too much, and they didn’t like the idea that I had to hire trained engineering personnel from my private business. You know the Army, O’Malley. If I had to use men from the Army’s Engineer Corps, the war would have been over before I had the aeronauts I needed to do the job.”

“I know the Army, all right,” I said. “But you were successful in battles under General McClellan. Why didn’t they recognize your value then?”

“They did. At first. When McClellan marched in his Peninsula Campaign in 1862, I made balloon ascensions to spot the enemy and give our artillery good range sightings. At the battles of Mechanicsville, Virginia and Seven Pines, my observations spotted the oncoming Rebel army, and I was able to send the alarm by telegraph that saved the isolated army of General Heintzelman. Lincoln gave me a commendation for that,” said Lowe.

“I heard the Rebs also put up their own balloon, but we were able to capture the tug that was hauling the balloon on the James River,” I said.

“That’s right. A Confederate officer by the name of Alexander took up the
Gazelle
and spotted our army coming upon them five miles upriver. He would have been able to save the Rebel forces encamped there, but
The Teaser
tug he was on was run aground below Malvern Hill on a falling tide. Our gunboats, the
Maratanza
and the famous
Monitor
, came up and captured both the crew and the balloon. Alexander was able to escape and tell his tale much later, after we were victorious in Virginia,” said Lowe.

Missus Lowe came into the shed. She was bearing iced tea in a big pitcher with glasses. She was a lovely women, dark haired and petite, with an infectious smile. Lowe had met her while in France. She was a Parisian actress, and her father had been in the palace guard of King Louis Philippe, who had fled to the U. S. as a political refugee.

“My little lioness!” Professor Lowe said, taking one of the glasses from his wife and kissing her right hand. “She rescued me when my balloon went down behind enemy lines at the First Battle of Bull Run. She came to get me disguised as an old hag driving a buckboard with canvas covers. She got me and my equipment safely out of Virginia!”

“I was just an old hag employee of yours, Thaddeus. He never paid me what the men were paid,” she looked over at me, winked and smiled. She then left the shed, and the odor of her perfume lingered with us.

“The reason I wanted to show you my hydrogen enriched gas process was that this might be a good way for you to compete with the terrorists. Because the fuel is much more efficient, it could serve to propel your balloons faster and with greater maneuverability. I was trying to explain this to the government, but they wanted me out. That’s when Leontine and I decided to retire to our farm,” said Lowe, gulping the last inch of tea from his glass.

“Our intelligence says that these balloons will be used to haul cargo that is brought into the gondola of the balloon from the deck of the pirated ship by a pulley system of some kind. Do you believe this is possible?” I asked.

“That would depend upon how large the balloon is and how it’s propelled. Unless you have specific information as to its size and propulsion system, I don’t believe I can speculate,” he said.

“My source in the government said this balloon was quite large, but they could not ascertain a fuel source,” I said.

Professor Lowe rubbed his chin and stared at the hydrogen gas processor on his bench. “The only person I know who was speaking about building a larger balloon was a young German lieutenant who was sent to observe McClellan’s campaign in 1863. His name was Ferdinand von Zeppelin, and he was quite interested in my balloon corps. In fact, he wanted to go up in one of my balloons to observe. I had no time to take him, and there was a problem with language difference, so I referred him to one of my employees, a German aeronaut by the name of John Steiner. Steiner took von Zeppelin up in a balloon at Poolesville. Steiner later told me about this most ingenious gentlemen over drinks.”

“What did he tell you?” I was interested.

“He told me that von Zeppelin was very interested in ballooning because Prussia was involved in expanding its power base in Europe. The German lieutenant had come up with an idea to keep the balloons inflated in the field. He noticed right away the problem of transporting the heavy gas generators around. The German suggested using a much faster and portable sulfuric acid and iron process. By using this process, I was able to inflate balloons in two-and-one-half hours and transport the gas generator in an ordinary army wagon.”

Lowe was quite enthused at this point in the conversation. He continued, “The satisfactory mobility of these portable generators was proven successfully in several major campaigns. They accompanied the army through the snows, sloughs and mud holes of the Peninsula's impossible roads; through the sleet and mire in Washington to the slaughter field at Fredericksburg in mid-winter; over the mountain roads of western Virginia after Antietam; and over the wagon tracks of the wilderness during the Chancellorsville campaign. Only once, during the critical action of the Seven Days when McClellan withdrew to the James, was it necessary to abandon any of this equipment to the enemy. In this instance, three generators were left on the field, comprising the only aeronautic equipment ever captured by the Confederate forces.”

“Do you believe this von Zeppelin might take these ideas and develop them even more?” I moved forward in my chair to emphasize the importance of the question.

“I believe this man was fascinated with the uses of hydrogen balloons. He later accompanied a Russian and Indian in a balloon expedition to find the source of the Mississippi River. Steiner told me this man’s one obsession was that he believed balloons could be made much larger and more powerful to control their maneuverability. Do you suspect him?”

“At the present time, I want to collect a list of suspects. I use a process of elimination. I suspect many until I can prove he or she is not involved in any way with the conspiracy or crime. What about the submersible and the use of a torpedo that can go rapidly toward its target beneath the water?” I wanted to probe his mind about this topic as well.

“I just showed you the ability of my process to create a powerful and efficient fuel source. One need only to apply this fuel to a different purpose. In this instance, a torpedo powered by a water-tight engine using gas could travel at high speeds. The trick would be how one could navigate this torpedo to its target. I have read about magnetic gyroscopes that can accurately control the heading and direction of ships as a gyrocompass. I can see how this same process might be applied to a torpedo weapon such as you have proposed. There is an English inventor by the name of Whitehead who has developed an interesting prototype torpedo. You may want to talk to him. A submarine is a different machine entirely, and I really can’t help you on this. I know there have been several inventors who have unsuccessfully attempted to develop submarines for the Navy, but they have all been unsuccessful. The Confederates’
H. L. Hunley
was technically a submarine, but practically it was a torpedo.”

Professor Lowe stood up. I had the distinct impression he was finished with our discussion for the day. I wondered if he were this brisk with his superiors during the war. Despite his attitude, I knew I would need him for my pursuits against the time traveling villains we were up against.