Thomas Monck Mason was a flute player, writer and balloon aeronaut. He wrote concerning the balloon trip and on theology. He was impoverished after renting London theatres to stage opera.

Biography

Monck Mason was born in 1803. He spent some years studying the flute abroad after he completed his formal education at Trinity College in Dublin. He composed a number of operatic works as well as being a professional flautist.

Monck Mason is shown in a painting preparing for a journey in a balloon with Charles Green

Charles Green (balloonist)

Charles Green was the United Kingdom's most famous balloonist of the 19th century. He experimented with coal gas as a cheaper and more readily available alternative to hydrogen for lifting power. His first ascent was in a coal gas balloon on 19 July 1821. He became a professional balloonist and...

 and Robert Hollond

Robert Hollond

Robert Hollond was an English balloonist and politician. He funded and then took part in establishing a distance ballooning record with Thomas Monck Mason and Charles Green. He later served as a Whig politician representing the constituency of Hastings.-Biography:Hollond was born in 1808 to...

. They travelled a record distance of 500 miles in 18 hours.

In 1836, Thomas Monck Mason wrote an Account of the Late æronautical Expedition from London to Weilburg which detailed the journey. This book was dedicated to Hollond.

Mason republished the book in an extended form in 1838 when it was titles, Aeronautica; Or, Sketches Illustrative of the Theory and Practice of Aerostation: Comprising an Enlarged Account of the Late Aerial Expedition to Germany. The book contained illustrations of the balloon and its journey. The engravings were said to be based on sketches made by Mason.

Mason describes the journey which took only eighteen hours and how after landing they started to return to England. He notes that it took several hours to procure fourteen helpers and a horse and cart. These were required to get the balloon to the nearest town of Weilburg

Weilburg

Weilburg is, with just under 14,000 inhabitants, the third biggest town in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany, after Limburg an der Lahn and Bad Camberg.- Location :...

. Mason notes that the precise location where they landed was by a mil called Dillhausen in the valley of Elbern, two leagues from Weilburg. This is interesting as he says this is also the place where M.Blanchard landed in an earlier balloon trip when he set out from Frankfurt in 1785.

Besides the painting and the book, the humorous poet Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...

 also wrote a comic poem to celebrate the epic journey to Nassau

Nassau, Germany

Nassau is a town located in the German Land of Rhineland-Palatinate. It lies in the Lahn River valley between the cities of Bad Ems and Limburg an der Lahn. Nassau is the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Nassau. The town is on the German-Dutch holiday road, the Orange Route...

. The Ode to Messrs Green, Hollond and Monck on their late Balloon Adventure, includes the following lines

Write then Messrs Monck Mason Hollond Green !
And tell us all you have or haven t seen !
Twaa kind when the balloon went out of town
To take Monck Mason up and set him down


In the 1840's, Mason was impoverished having lost considerable funds after leasing the Opera House in Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

. The court case over the losses was to drag on for 23 years.

After the balloon trip

For over thirty years after 1845 Mason published books on theology. His first book argued for the infallibility of the bible. Mason's 1863 work The Work and the Word or The Dealings and Doctrines of God in relation to the State and Salvation of Man summarily Reviewed Reconciled and Recommended in accordance with the dictates of Human Reason was described as ingeniously contrived, but theoretically theological.

In fiction

Mason's book on the balloon trip was the model for a famous hoax

The Balloon-Hoax

"The Balloon-Hoax" is the title used in collections and anthologies of a newspaper article written by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844. Originally presented as a true story, it detailed European Monck Mason's trip across the Atlantic Ocean in only three days in a gas balloon...

 told by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

. He published accounts of a man called Monck Mason who had just crossed the Atlantic by balloon in three days. The character of Monck Mason was not a real person, though he was based heavily on Thomas Monck Mason; the story borrowed heavily from Mason's 1836 book Account of the Late Aeronautical Expedition from London to Weilburg.

Mason died in 1889.