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[[title]]PROVINCIAL INTELLIGENCE[[/title]]
On Monday, about one o'clock, Mr. [[underlined]] Sadler[[/underlined]], accompanied by [[underlined]]Mr. Clayfield[[/underlined]], ascended in a [[underlined]]balloon[/underlined]] from Bristol, and till Wednesday noon their friends were in the utmost anxiety respecting their fate. On that day, however, they returned in the Somerset coach. It appears that being blown off the Welch coast, the [[underlined]]balloon[[/underlined]] descended at sea about five o'clock on Monday afternoon, after having passed through a space of 100 miles in about three hours. They continue an hour in the water before they were picked up, during which they were carried gently along before the wind, the balloon acting as a sail. As both the Aeronauts were provided with life preservers, they were under no apprehensions of drowning. During their marine voyage, the wind, which had driven them off the shore, shifted, and being drifted back towards the coast, they were picked up about five miles off Lymouth, a little to the North of Ilfracombe. The travellers sustained no injury. In the management of the Balloon they encountered considerable difficulty, and both became at last nearly exhausted. At a quarter past four o'clock in the afternoon the Balloon was observed to descend with astonishing precipitancy into the sea, five miles from Lymouth, on the North Devon coast, and a boast was immediately sent off to its assistance. The voyagers were brought to shore in a state of extreme fatigue, and Mr. Sadler was unable to stand, from having been some time in the water before the boat could reach the Balloon. The distance they travelled, Mr. Sadler says, could not be less than one hundred miles; and this was performed in the surprisingly short space of three hours only! Their perilous situation may be in some degree imagined, having discharged all their ballast, flung out their great coats, and everything else they possessed, including a favourite barometer given to Mr. Sadler by Dr. Johnson, for which he has been offered two hundred guineas. It was by mere accident the Balloon was observed to fall in the sea; and had it not been a remarkably serene evening, the parties must inevitably have perished. The gas was so expended, that the Balloon could not have floated an hour longer in the sea. They endeavoured to reach Ireland, but found it impossible. - Taunton Courier. ^[[Sept 1819]]