THE WONDROUS EZEKIEL AIRSHIP

            Every story of the old west in this series is true. While many western stories have the ring of campfire tall tales you will find none here. Every story is based on fact whether about a mighty warrior humbled by flickering lights or a sea serpent said to live in a desert lake. Or, this one about the world’s first airplane flight. The Wright Brothers did it in 1903, right? Or maybe not. Just maybe a proud Texan beat them to it.

          

THE WONDROUS EZEKIEL AIRSHIP

                                                     

by

                                              

Michael A. McKeever

            No one in Texas had ever seen anything like it. As a matter of fact no one anywhere had ever seen anything like it. The men peered at the scale model on the table in front of them. It looked sort of like a wheat threshing machine with its big wheels and gears. But not quite. What on earth was it?

            It was, explained Burrell Cannon, a flying machine. He called it the “Ezekiel  Airship” after the Bible’s Book of Ezekiel where it is written “When the creatures rose from the ground.”

            A machine that would actually fly wherever the person steering it wanted to go? True it was the year 1901 and the start of a new century and already there were all sorts of new-fangled inventions. Like horseless carriages called “automobiles” and “electric lights” that glowed brighter than any oil lamp. But a flying machine? No one had ever heard of such a thing.

            Nonetheless, said Cannon, there would be such a thing because he was going to build it. That is, if he could raise the money needed for materials and to pay workmen.

            The businessmen of Pittsburg, Texas looked at the model and talked it over. Cannon was a man of his word, an ordained Baptist minister no less. He also operated a sawmill so he knew a lot about machinery. It just might work! The Ezekiel Airship Manufacturing Company was born.

            Construction soon began on the airship and by late 1902 it was ready for a test flight. Unfortunately here the records run out and we have only local stories as to what happened next. Accounts differ but several people claim to have seen the airship actually fly. How far or fast is disputed but witnesses insisted that yes, it indeed flew. If so, it was the world’s first heavier-than-air flying machine.

            In any case more money was needed for work to continue. The machine was loaded onto a railroad flatcar to be shipped to St. Louis, Missouri. A grand international exposition was to be held there with visitors from all over the world. Surely some would be interested in investing in the Ezekiel Airship Manufacturing Company.

            But the flying machine never got there. As the train crossed eastern Texas a violent wind whipped across the plains and blew the airship right off the car. It was found broken and scattered, never to fly again.

            A few months later in 1903 Wilber and Orville Wright’s airplane wobbled into the air over the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. History tells us that their aircraft was the world’s first heavier-than-air flying machine.

            Maybe. Maybe not. Some folks still insist the real first flight happened in Texas nearly a year before the Wright Brother’s flight. The Texas Legislature has officially proclaimed the Ezekiel “the state’s first successful self-powered aircraft.” A Texas Historical Commission monument even marks the site of the Ezekiel Airship’s first flight.

            But we’ll never know for sure. The proof was lost long ago, blown like a tumble weed across the arid plains in the hot Texas wind.    

--The End--