Monck Mason

Thomas Monk Mason (1803–1889) was a flutist, writer, and aerostat. He wrote about ballooning and theology. He became impoverished after renting London theaters for staging an opera. Monk Mason was born in 1803. He spent several years studying flute abroad after he completed his formal education at Trinity College Dublin. He wrote a number of opera works, and was also a professional flutist. Monk Mason is depicted in a picture preparing for a hot air balloon trip with Charles Green and Robert Hollond. They traveled a record distance of 500 miles in 18 hours. In 1836, Thomas Monk Mason wrote a Report on the Late Air Navigation Expedition from London to Weilburg, which described the journey in detail. This book was dedicated to Hollond. Mason reprinted the book in an expanded form in 1838, when the names “Aeronautics” appeared; Or "Essays illustrating the theory and practice of an aerostation: including an extended report on a late air expedition to Germany." The book contained illustrations of a balloon and its journey. Engravings are said to be based on drafts made by Mason. Mason describes a journey that took only eighteen hours, and how, after landing, they began to return to England. He notes that it took several hours to find fourteen helpers, a horse and a cart. They were needed to deliver a balloon to the nearest city of Weilburg. Mason notes that the exact place where they landed was in a mile named Dilhausen in the Elburn Valley, two leagues from Weilburg. This is interesting because he says it is also the place where Jean-Pierre Blanchard landed in an earlier balloon flight when he set off from Frankfurt in 1785.