Professor Swift, John Ahern, and Rodney…

My copy of Daniel Cohen’s (1981) “The Great Airship Mystery: A UFO of the 1890s” arrived yesterday, and I’ve started working my way through it. Initial impressions are that it definitely earned its place on my essential Airship Flap bibliography: it’s thorough, well written, and the author is a definite UFO skeptic. Where Cohen has evidence, he’s usually ready to bring it to the fore to support his point.

Having said that, the very first story he tells about the 1896 Californian Airship Flap (p.8) is about the astronomer Professor Swift (this also appears in Loren Gross’ book): but neither Cohen nor Gross expand on the story very much. It seemed that neither had a copy of the story, and recounted it second-hand.

I found it in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Volume 26, Number 17, 6 November 1896 (p.1, column 6):

Saw the Comet With the Naked Eye

Dr Lewis Swift, astronomer in charge of the Mount Lowe observatory and discoverer of comets, was interviewed in regard to his latest find and said:

“At sunset on Sunday, Sept. 20, I saw an unknown luminous object with the naked eye about 1 degree east of the sun. Examining it with an opera glass, a faint companion was visible. Both were seen by all the visitors at the hotel. My first thought was that it might be a small fire on the mountain, but a moment’s observation dispelled this idea, for one-half of the sun was below and one-half above the mountain, and the object was still above the sun. It was also seen to descend and set, as did the sun four minutes previously. Tuesday evening I essayed to examine them with the 4½ inch comet seeker, but did not succeed until one-half the sun had sunk below the mountain, when it became visible, but whether it was the bright or the faint one I cannot tell. It is not unheard of for a comet to break into several pieces, and, of course, it might be a case of this kind. Through the telescope it was no bright than when seen with the naked eye on Sunday. I infer it was the companion. This time it was north of the sun instead of east as before. It was a strange affair. I hardly know what to make of it, but that it was a comet is certain. Both seem to be growing fainter. Such a discovery has been made on two or three occasions heretofore.” – San Francisco Examiner.

The Marysville Daily Appeal, Volume LXXIV, Number 87, 10 October 1896 had noted that “Dr. Lewis Swift, the astronomer in charge of Mount Lowe Observatory, has discovered two new comets“. Similarly, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Volume 25, Number 147, 7 October 1896 noted (in an article saying how the Mount Lowe Observatory was likely to soon close) that “[s]ince Professor Swift came to Echo Mountain he has discovered four comets, the last about a week ago, a double comet“. (The same appeared in the Call.)

What I’d really like to do is to cross-reference the location of the “hotel” (from which Professor Swift made his naked eye observations at sunset) against the direction of the sunset on 20th September 1896. However, this wasn’t immediately obvious from the story, though the California newspaper archives didn’t seem to have any copies of the San Francisco Examiner.

Also: while looking through the Californian newspaper archives, I found the following story in the Morning Union, 23 Oct 1896 [Grass Valley, CA]:

A Strange Meteor

Capt. Henry Richards and son, while coming into town from Gold Flat last evening, noticed a meteor or falling star passing through the northern heavens from west to east on a horizontal line, which was of such brilliancy as to attract considerable attention. The star or meteor seemed to be in three parts and the line of fire, resembling the tail of a comet, looked to the naked eye to be about 100 feet in length. The three parts were quite a distance apart and appeared to be as big as footballs. The strange meteor or whatever it was did not fall to the earth, but passed into space.

For reference, Gold Flat is about 3 miles NE of Grass Valley (so not far at all).

This sighting seems almost identical to the one from around the same time by “a Stockton man named John Ahern” (Cohen pp. 8-9), who saw “three large balls of fire [that] were strung together“, with a tail of fire extending from the third, that Ahern estimated to be “about fifteen feet in length“.

I’d note that the Stockton Record ran a story on 10 August 1896 on the tricks John Ahern (watchman at Southern Pacific’s Sacramento railroad depot) and his dog Rodney used to detect different people’s voting persuasions. (Here he is mentioned again in August 1896, though sans Rodney.) So I suspect that despite the Stockton Record’s location in Stockton, this very early sighting is far more likely to have been in Sacramento, where the early bulk of the California sightings happened.

Furthermore, I found another report from Sacramento from 22 October 1896 in the San Jose Mercury-news of 23 October 1896:

Brilliant Double Meteor

Early this evening, a brilliant meteor came out of the west, traveling on a perfectly flat line and apparently quite close to the earth. As it passed easterly across the city, it divided into two parallel lines of light, each with several balls of fire at regular intervals. When lost seen it was traveling on a horizontal line.

The picture I’m getting here is that on the night of 22nd October 1896, Captain Henry Richards (and son), John Ahern, and the third (unnamed) spotter in Sacramento all saw the same aerial object, perhaps travelling from the Grass Valley area to Sacramento (about 50 miles south as the dirigible flies).

It also sounds to me (from the “balls of fire”) as though the airship crew was still fine-tuning the size of the nitroglycerine pellets (make them too big and you’d end up spitting out “balls of fire”, right?)

John Ahern

Finally, I found a record in the Sacramento Bee of John Ahern’s death in 1900 at the age of 71:

AHERN—John Ahern, an old and well known citizen of this city, died this morning shortly after 12 o’clock in the Railroad Hospital, from the effects of injuries which he received a few days ago in the railroad yards. Mr Ahern was an old employee in the yards. The other day, he started to walk between some cars standing on a switch, and as he did, so an engine started to switch the cars to another part of the yard. The cars came together and Ahern was caught between them and severly crushed. An investigation at the hospital revealed the fact that one of his ribs had been broken and he was injured in other parts of his body.

Deceased was a native of County Cork, Ireland, aged 71 years. He was the father of Thomas, David, Alice, and Maggie Ahern.