The phantom airships

The fear of airships - blimps or zeppelins invading was very real. There was even a
name for it Teutonphobia.
Airships must have seemed like extraordinary technology to people just coming out of the 1800s. Huge ships capable of flying large distances.
Newspapers in England began reporting sightings - often called phantom airships and it was near hysteria peak in 1909. It was mostly reports of lights in the sky.
Then, in late July 1909 a report from Dunedin scared people. Moving lights in the sky. Residents stood and watched the unmoving lights in shock, until they suddenly shot away.
It was also seen by Mosgiel residents.
As newspapers began picking up the story more and more people who had seen it came forward. And the story began to grow that it was an airship. People were also saying they heard something like a motorcar - like an engine. Others said there was a number of lights,
It was so unsettling that police were called in to search.
The phenomenon began to move northwards and the story began to grow - and it became a German spy airship, ready to drop bombs.
Perhaps the most spectacular incident took place on Friday July 23rd in broad daylight at Kelso, where 23 schoolchildren and an adult described a Zeppelin-type airship swooping low over the township, of which several detailed sketches were produced by witnesses.
Another described it as a huge illuminated object moving about in the air. Still more said it was a cigar shaped balloon with a carriage beneath it.
By August whatever it was was being seen in Hawke’s Bay then further and further up the country.
Then in September, the sightings stopped.
In later years the potential for it to be an airship has changed. Could it have been UFOs? There has certainly been speculation over the years.
One of the first to see it was John Boyd who had been born in Otago on May 4, 1877 to Edward and Jane Boyd who were settlers in Otago. They had come from Scotland in 1858.
John was one of 11 children and 32 at the time he saw the possible airship. He was considered literate, sociable, musical, and of above-average intelligence and progressive, being in charge of a herd of cows and trialing new milking methods.
He would be considered a credible witness.
John was a founding member and Secretary for the local ‘Glee Club’ – a social group organising musical entertainments, and of him chairing a session of the Benhar Debating Club. He married Florence Hilda Turner.
So what was it he saw? Was it just mass hysteria? Actual airships? Or UFOs?
John never got an answer to his questions about what he saw. He died on January 29, 1964 in Levin and was returned to the South Island and buried in the Balclutha Old Cemetery.
Picture by Biblioteca Valenciana Nicolau Primitiu.​