extraordinary%20encounters

walk. Three crew members stepped outside,
two to work on the structure, the third to chat
with the witness. The stranger told Williams
that he had built the ship after many years of
experiment and error “at a little town in the
interior of New York.”
The May 16 issue of the same newspaper
carried a letter forwarded by Dr. D. H.
Tucker. Tucker said that a young man who
subsequently drowned in a flood in Mississippi
had written the original, recounting an
experience that occurred on April 19 in the
Lake Charles, Louisiana, area. While riding in
his buggy, he spotted an airship approaching.
A high-pitched whistle from the vessel
spooked his horses, and he was thrown to the
ground. When the ship landed, two men
rushed from it to help him to his feet and to
extend their apologies. One introduced himself
as “Mr. Wilson,” though the witness
doubted that was his real name. Wilson stated
that he and his companion, Scott Warren, had
invented a fleet of ships. They were now seeking
to demonstrate that long-distance airship
travel was safe and economical. The young
man was invited to tour the vehicle, where he
met two other crew members.
That same day, at around 11 P.M., at Beaumont,
Texas, according to an account published
in the Houston Daily Post of April 21,
lights in a neighbor’s pasture caught the eyes
of J. R. Ligon and his son Charley. They observed
“four men moving around a large dark
object” that they recognized, as they approached
it, as an airship. Its crew asked for
water and accompanied the two to the house,
where they filled their buckets. “I accosted
one of the men,” the elder Ligon reported,
“and he told me his name was Wilson. . . .
They were returning from a trip out on the
Gulf and were now headed toward Iowa,
where the airship was built.” It was one of five
that had been constructed there. The Ligons
accompanied them back to the ship, a huge
structure 136 feet long and 20 feet wide, with
four large wings and propellers attached to
bow and stern. Wilson explained it was powered
by “electricity.”
Wilson 271
On April 25 the New Orleans Daily Pi c a -
y u n e carried an interv i ew with a visitor, Rabbi
A. Levy of Beaumont. Levi recalled that “a b o u t
10 days ago,” on hearing that an airship had
landed late that night on a farm just outside
t own, he hastened to the site. T h e re sat an airship
some 150 feet long with 100-foot wings.
“I spoke to one of the men when he went into
the farmer’s house, and shook hands with
him,” Levy claimed. “Yes, I did hear him say
w h e re it was built, but I can’t remember the
name of the place, or the name of the inve n t o r.
He said that they had been traveling a gre a t
deal, and we re testing the machine. I was do
dumbfounded that I could not frame an intelligent
question to ask.” He did re m e m b e r,
though, that “e l e c t r i c i t y” powe red the craft.
At Uvalde, three hundred miles southwe s t
of Beaumont, twe n t y - t h ree hours after the
L i g o n s’s alleged encounter, Sheriff H. W. Ba ylor
witnessed an airship landing near his home.
Baylor saw three crew members and spoke
with one, a Mr. Wilson, a native of Go s h e n ,
New Yo rk. The aeronaut recalled an old friend,
Captain C. C. Akers, whom he said he had
k n own in Fo rt Wo rth. Now, he understood,
Akers lived in the area. Baylor replied that he
k n ew Akers, who was employed as a customs
officer in Eagle Pass but who frequently visited
Uvalde. After asking the sheriff to give his best
to Akers, Wilson and his crew flew away. T h e
Houston Daily Po s t , which re p o rted the story
in its April 21 issue, mentioned the sighting,
the same night as Ba y l o r’s alleged encounter
with Wilson, of an airship passing just nort h
of the Baylor residence. Contacted by the Ga l -
veston Daily Ne w s ( April 28), Akers confir m e d
that twenty years earlier he had known “a man
by the name of Wilson from New Yo rk
s t a t e . . . . He was of a mechanical turn of mind
and was then working on aerial navigation and
something that would astonish the world.”
At midnight on April 22, east of Josserand
(seventy-five miles northwest of Beaumont), a
“whirring noise” awoke farmer Frank Nichols,
according to the Houston Daily Post (April
26). On investigating, he spotted a large, brilliantly
lighted airship in his cornfield. Two