John “James” Andrew Morrell came of age during America’s age of charlatans. He was born in 1872 in Kansas to Thomas and Louisa Morrell. His father died when James was three, and James moved west to San Francisco as a young man. It was a thrilling time to be in California. It felt like every day, marvelous new inventions made modern life easier. But along with all that progress came a lot of flimflam.
It’s impossible to know if Morrell was a huckster or a true believer, but the historical record leans in the direction of a bit of both. In 1907, the 35-year-old opened an office on Van Ness for his National Airship Company. Residents up and down the West Coast soon started receiving mailers soliciting shareholders for the company.
“The entire construction is complete and as soon as the machinery arrives we will launch the ship,” it read. “Our airship, as now equipped, will carry 75 passengers, engines of 1,000 horsepower and fuel for 15 days.”
None of this was technically true, but Morrell’s flashy promises allegedly sold 250,000 shares of stock, ranging from 10 cents to $1 a share ($1 is about $30 today, adjusted for inflation). About a year after opening up shop, federal investigators came banging on Morrell’s door in February 1908 to arrest him for using the U.S. mail to defraud; after being tipped off by disgruntled investors, investigators determined Morrell was running a massive airship racket. As he was hauled off to jail, Morrell shouted to a San Francisco Examiner reporter he was going to “revolutionize the methods of transportation of the universe.”
The inside of a courtroom became a familiar place for Morrell as he was hit again and again with fraud charges. But each time, he wriggled out of them and returned to his beloved airship. In late May 1908, he began the process of assembling the behemoth in a field near Berkeley High. Its balloon was 450 feet long and 36 feet wide and lined with the finest aeronautical-grade silk (more on that later). It was lifted by five gas-powered engines like the kind found in cars. For a week, Morrell and his engineers and builders slept in shifts next to the craft to prevent vandalism.
On May 23, it was ready to go aloft. Although Morrell had never once tested the machine, he told onlookers he was going to fly across the bay to San Francisco and back. And from there, commercial flights to New York City would begin.
Thousands of people gathered to watch the Morrell airship take off. The engines were turned on and gas began filling the oblong balloon. Morrell and his crew of 15 hopped on board. Incredibly, one crew member took his position on top of the balloon, the only spot from which he could survey the scene; once the balloon was airborne, he planned on swinging down into the passenger basket.
Even as the balloon expanded, the crowd saw it didn’t seem to be operating correctly. One end was “weak and flabby” while the other was “round and full.” Morrell was also struggling to be heard by his crew as the cheers of the assembled crowd grew louder. They were shouting and gesturing at each other to no avail. Then, the airship rose. It made it only 100 feet up before it began tilting. The weight of the engines was dragging down the half-inflated mass. The balloon was ripping.
Thousands of people ran in terror as the sinking balloon headed for the crowd at Milvia and Kittredge. Men were falling or jumping out of the airship onto the ground below. In the chaos, a 4-year-old named Enid Hoffman wandered into the street and was hit by a car; thankfully, she survived.
So too — to the amazement of literally everyone — did the airship crew. Although most broke at least one major limb, they were all alive.
“So many are hurt, so serious are the injuries, and so great was the menace to those who stood near the point of ascension, that the feeling of horror which at first possessed the community has given place to a sentiment of relief; a thankfulness that it was no worse,” the Oakland Tribune reported.
The airship came to rest on a baseball diamond where a game was taking place. The players ran into the wreckage to help the injured crew. Incredibly, the man who was on top of the balloon when it crashed survived. He would later say that his position probably saved his life, as the weight of the deflated balloon might have crushed him. Otto Whipple, the man responsible for the airship’s third engine, was furious at Morrell.
“Morrell and his whole crew should have been sent to an insane asylum,” Whipple told the press. “No safeguard protected the lives of the men in the car.”
Morrell was rushed to the hospital for his injuries, mostly broken bones. The media followed him there, and he gave interviews from his bedside.
“My injuries do not torment me as much as the mental anguish I suffer,” he said. “I would rather have had my body crushed to a pulp than to have my experimental flight fail today.” In spite of his massive failure, Morrell was undeterred. “I still believe that I had solved the problem of aerial navigation,” he said.
He hadn’t. The wreckage was picked over by souvenir seekers, who inspected the balloon and found it wasn’t silk at all. It was just “flimsy light grade oiled canvas and that the silk lining existed in imagination only,” the Berkeley Gazette reported.
Morrell’s fiance rushed to his defense. Only identified as Miss A. Kern from San Francisco, the Tribune said she blamed “disobedience to the orders of Morrell” for the crash. According to National Airship Company employees, the woman had been quietly bankrolling Morrell’s folly for the past two years. In fact, she’d blown through $70,000 of her inheritance on his passion project and fell in love with the charismatic inventor along the way.
The romance didn’t last — and neither did the National Airship Company. While still recuperating from his injuries in the hospital, authorities came to arrest Morrell for more allegations of fraud. Although it seems he beat the charges yet again, his reputation was in tatters. The airship stayed grounded and, in any case, it wouldn’t have been a sustainable business model for long. Two decades later, the Hindenburg disaster put the final nail in the coffin for airship travel.
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It’s unclear what Morrell did with the rest of his life. A 1940 census shows him living in Oakland but doesn’t list an occupation. In 1957, Morrell got on the bus from his home in Napa to Oakland. Sometime during the drive, he died in his sleep. He was 85.
Although long out of the public eye, his fledging career as an inventor was enough to garner him a front-page obituary in the Napa Valley Register. It said he had never married after his fiance died in the 1906 earthquake. This detail might be more Morrell storytelling; the year of the earthquake, Morrell was interviewed by his hometown paper in Kansas. He praised the government’s response to the catastrophe and chatted about how he believed San Francisco would rebuild. He never mentions a loved one who perished, a curious omission if she did indeed exist.
As for his other fiance, Miss Kern, searches through newspapers and census records unearthed no sign of her other than a few mentions in stories about the crash. Perhaps her embarrassed family asked her to use a pseudonym.
Morrell’s obituary, very kindly, omits mention of the crash and merely says he constructed a “dirigible … that stayed in the air 200 feet.”
“Mr. Morrell never pursued his studies in the aviation field,” the Register added.
He is buried at Tulocay Cemetery in Napa next to his half-sister Louisa.