My guess is that you won’t have seen any of these photographs before. And, from a thrill-a-minute point of view, possibly won’t be in too much of a hurry to see them again. On the other hand, you might find this more interesting than it might appear at first sight, and if nothing else, it certainly answers a few questions about how troops might have been supplied when the land across which those supplies had to be transported had been turned into a quagmire by repeated artillery bombardments that had destroyed any semblance of the drainage systems that once patchworked Flanders Fields. Note I use the words ‘might have been’. Read on……
In the April 1919 issue of the Royal Engineers Journal, an article on the ‘History of the Railways and Roads Training Centre R.E., Longmoor*’ contained these two paragraphs under the heading ‘Ropeways, Etc’.
*in Hampshire.
One of these systems was hand-operated*, the other motorised, and the day after the experiments ceased, this description of the motorised, Leeming, system appeared, scripted by none other than H. G. Wells. And, before we go any further, I know what you’re thinking. What madness is this? An aerial ropeway? Amidst a war characterised, as much as anything, by men hiding below ground in trenches? Like, that’s going to work! Well, here’s a scenario to consider.
*The Hamilton Hand (or Portable) Ropeway plays no further part in this post, but does get another mention at the end.
In the three months between August & October 1917 that the British and Canadians spent slogging their way up the gentle slopes of the Passchendaele Ridge towards the village of Passchendaele itself, they left behind a seemingly impassable wasteland that somehow had to be negotiated to support the troops in the new front line. The only redeeming feature was that the Germans, having finally been pushed off the crest of the ridge, could no longer observe the British goings-on, meaning that the concept of an aerial ropeway to transport supplies and equipment above the morass might make more sense than at first glance.
The initial pages of Wells’ description explain the point of the contraption,…
…followed by a history of the development of the system, before a detailed account of the components of the apparatus itself begins on the fourth page (right), and continues on the pages that follow which I’ll show you later, but if we go back to the bottom of the page on the left,…
…we can see that there were three experimental systems that were actually set up, the first two of the same type but of differing lengths, with the third a different and, apparently, superior system. And what’s more, Wells’ report is accompanied by photographs, photographs that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out have not seen the light of day for a very long time indeed, if at all, and which we have Duncan the Younger to thank for uncovering.
This is the only picture of the first experimental line, two hundred and thirty yards long, to be exact, using single poles, which you can see disappearing into the distance to the right, along much of its length.
Experiments in poles. The original text for these three images reads, from left: Alternative design of single guyed pole; ‘X’ pole without guys proposed as standard design*; Arrangement at top of ‘X’ pole.
*looks like it has a guy to me, but what do I know? Perhaps the sentence is somewhat ambiguous and could read, ‘ ‘X’ pole (but without guys) proposed as standard design’?
The second experimental line was a full kilometre long and, according to Mr. Wells, ‘has been the basis of much experiment’. The pole seen here is the same one seen to the right of the tree in the inset picture (the same picture opened this post), which also shows the strongback at the start of the line in the foreground. Note the base of the pole in the main picture enabling it to be lowered – hence the ‘collapsible’ in the title – and the hand grip halfway up.
But it was the Third Experimental Line, some eight hundred yards in length, that is being demonstrated in this and the remaining photos. Note the box being transported both above & below…
…this image showing a close-up of the ‘A’ frames on strongbacks used at each end of the line.
The Third Experimental Line seems to have been the most adaptable system, the picture above showing a platform carrier,…
…this image showing another hook carrier with two boxes attached,…
…and here a stretcher carrier.
Testing the holding power of pickets (both hut & pickets visible in the background a few photos back),…
…and here a lorry drives the haulage rope,…
…this the bespoke motor intended to power the whole system once operational – presumably fitted into the lorry.
Returning to H. G. Wells, the description of the system’s components continues across pages five & six,…
…following which we have ‘Instructions For Setting Out Line’, here on the left, and ‘Running Repairs’ & Capacity of the System’ on the right,…
…before the main document ends with a small section on camouflage, and a reference to the fifteen pages of appendices that follow; a certain note of frustration enters the writer’s tone towards the end, before the report concludes with a list of contributors.
And here are those pages of appendices for your pleasure,…
…and, obviously, there will be a test at the end, so I’d get to grips with these equations if I were you.
The ‘ears’ mentioned on the right…
…are seen here in close-up, and, using the original text that accompanied them, the inset shows ‘Ear & Stop’, while the main picture shows ‘Ear & Stop opened out’. Now you know.
Two of the nine pages of blueprints that accompany the documents. If you can’t live without the other seven, I am open to offers.
Wells (above, pictured around the time of his ‘invention’) would publish his autobiography in 1934, and there’s a passage in which he describes how he invented his aerial ropeway which you might find of interest. Accepting that Wells was quite capable of taking others’ ideas and putting his own moniker on the copyright* – as if the idea of an aerial ropeway had never been considered before (following illustrations) – it’s interesting to read his thoughts on the concept, as opposed to the text in the official description: ‘I was lying snug in bed one night and I could not sleep. My window was open and the rain was pouring down outside and suddenly in an imaginative flash I saw the communication trenches swamped and swimming in mud and a miserable procession of overloaded Tommies struggling up to the front line along the wet planks. Some stumbled and fell. I knew men were often drowned in this dismal pilgrimage and that everyone who got to the front line arrived nearly worn out and smothered in mud. Moreover the utmost supplies these men could carry were insufficient. Suddenly I saw that this was an entirely avoidable strain. I tumbled out of bed and spent the rest of the night planning a mobile telpherage system. My idea was to run forward a set of T shaped poles with an erector wire, so that they could be all pulled up for use or allowed to lie flat and that two tractor wires could then work on the arms of the T. Power could be supplied by a motor lorry at the base of this line.’
*he gets much criticizism for this, but then so do Led Zeppelin.
‘Either just before this or just after it I met Winston Churchill at lunch in Clare Sheridans studio in St. Johns Wood. I think it was just before. I had aired my grievance about the tanks and so I was able to get going with him about this telpherage project forthwith. He saw my points and put me in touch with capable men to supplement my mechanical insufficiency. Upon his instructions, E. V. Haigh, who was at the Ministry of Munitions, set the Trench Warfare Department in motion, and a temporary lieutenant Leeming I think from Lancashire worked out the apparatus with a group of men and made a reality of my dream. We invented a really novel war accessory. I contributed nothing except the first idea and a few comments and it was available as a perfected pattern before the end of the war, though never in sufficient quantity to produce perceptible effects. The tin hats did not like it. It would have saved multitudes of casualties and greatly facilitated the opening phases of the Allied offensive in 1918.’
‘This telpherage of ours was no mere static transport system. It could be run forward almost as fast as infantry could advance; any part could be carried by a single man, it could be hauled up for action and lie when not in use; an ordinary lorry, the lorry that had brought up the poles and wire, could work it from a protected emplacement and it could carry an endless string of such loads as a wounded man on a stretcher or an equivalent weight of food or ammunition. We worked a rough trial length on Clapham Common and then installed, in Richmond Park, more than a mile which behaved admirably. If the line were disabled by a shell it was easy to repair and replace, and it was extremely light to bring up. It was practically invisible from the air, since its use wore no track and it could be shifted laterally and dismantled as easily as it was erected.’
‘Aldershot, I presently realized, was resolved not to have anything to do with this telpherage of ours at least as we had devised it. It was bad enough for soldiers and gentlemen to be bothered with tanks, but this affair of sticks and string was even worse. It was the sort of contraption anyone might make mistakes about and then where were you? However, in its earnest desire to keep the business in professional hands, Aldershot produced alternative systems. They were much heavier and clumsier than ours and one, much in favour, required men to walk along the track, so as we had to explain to these professional soldiers exposing the system to air photography and air-directed fire.’
‘A bugbear we could never banish from these inflexible minds was the dread that our lines which could be lowered in an instant and cleared away in an hour would interfere with lateral movements. This in no-mans land with its shell holes and old trenches and jungle thickets of cut wire! The thought of a line, any line, hypnotized these warriors, just as a chalk line will hypnotize a hen. I was baffled and worried beyond measure by these perverse difficulties. I felt my practical incompetence acutely. I did not know whom to get at and how to put the thing through. I had only a dim apprehension of the forces and instincts that were holding back not merely our little contrivance, but a multitude of other innovations that might have changed the face of the war. Meanwhile on every wet night so many poor lads fell and choked in the mud, and the little inadequate offensives squittered forward beyond their supports and succumbed to the counter-attack. I could not sleep for it. I was so worried and my nerves were so fatigued that I was presently afflicted with allopecia areata, well known in the flying corps of those days as an anxiety disease, in which the hair comes out in patches. Ridiculous patches of localized shiny baldness appeared and did not vanish for a year or so, when first they sprouted a down of grey hair and then became normally hairy again. It was not much in the way of a war wound, but in all modesty I put it on record.’
‘The Work of the R.E. in the European War, 1914-19’, published in 1927 and limited to only six hundred copies, so if you find one, it’s worth a few quid to the right buyer, lists both the Leeming & Hamilton Ropeways,…
…both of which also appeared in the earlier ‘The Official History of the Ministry of Munitions’ (1922), which has a small, but more detailed, section on aerial ropeway systems among its twelve volumes, and suggests that, had trench warfare continued throughout 1918, both systems would indeed have been used ‘in action’. And if, at this point, you really, truly, have read all of this post, you probably know as much as anyone alive about the potential use of British aerial ropeways on the Western Front in the Great War, and you deserve hearty congratulations. And a Gold Star. Dammit, I forgot the maths test……