Is it possible a Texas Baptist preacher beat the famous Wright Brothers to achieve powered flight a full year before Kitty Hawk? At the turn of the century, huge cash prizes were offered by newspapers for the first powered, heavier-than-air flight. In Pittsburg, Texas, a Baptist minister and inventor named Burrell Cannon just may have made history with his unusual craft, the Ezekiel Airship.
The Reverend Burrell Cannon was pastor of the Pittsburg Baptist Church in Pittsburg and believed there was ‘a purpose in every word of the Scriptures.’ And it was from the Bible’s Book of Ezekiel that he got the idea for his wheel-within-a-wheel, winged airship.
“The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the gleam of beryl; and they four had one likeness; and their appearance was as it were a wheel within the middle of the wheel.”
Book of Ezekiel – 1:16
Cannon was born in 1848 on a Mississippi farm, where he grew up working with farm machines. He studied mechanics at Mississippi College and eventually became a Baptist preacher. At age 30, he left for Texas to start a saw mill, preach, and tinker with his small inventions. He already had 2 patents —for a cotton cleaning machine and a butter churn dasher. But Burrell Cannon but he had a much grander idea in mind!
The American frontier was no longer out west, but up in the skies. For years, inventors had played with winged gliders, but now the race was on to build the first powered airship. And while most aviators, like the Wright Brothers, studied birds for inspiration, Cannon studied the Old Testament. He spent more than fifteen years poring over the Book of Ezekiel.
By 1900, Cannon, was an accomplished engineer now with 9 patents for various wind and water-driven farm machines. Inspired by the 1st & 10th chapters of Ezekiel, he began designing an airship, several years prior to the Wright Brothers first flight. The design included complicated wheels and paddles for propulsion, which were marvels of engineering.
But would the darn thing actually fly?
Burrell Cannon believed he was guided by God, and hence God would surely ensure its success. The result would, after all, be a means for man to get a closer to heaven—and make more than a little money along the way. Cannon sold his mill, and to raise further capital, he and his 4th wife, Amanda, moved to nearby Pittsburg, a thriving cotton town about 120 miles east of Dallas. There he began to preach to his flock about his future airship.
In February 1901, the Pittsburg Gazette Cannon was described as a ‘Renaissance Man for the Industrial age.’ It praised the Ezekiel’s ingenious design and declared that if the airship flew, “untold wealth will be the reward.” That August, he and ten investors incorporated the Ezekiel Air Ship Manufacturing Company for $20,000, selling stock at $25 a share. Cannon boasted that his stockholders would easily become millionaires overnight. He had plans to build a large version that could carry 41,000 pounds of cargo. The first Ezekiel Airship was built at the Thorsell’s Foundry in Pittsburg, Texas.
At first, crowds swarmed about the machine shop. Cannon complained he couldn’t get any work done, so he limited viewings and, ever the entrepreneur, charged 25 cents admission. Locals marveled at the light chassis made of hollow steel. It was powered by an 80 hp, 4 cylinder gas engine. The fuel was ingeniously kept in the hollow framing of the chassis, similar to today’s planes with gas tanks in the wings.
Cannon built eight prototypes that looked like something more from Jules Verne than Old Testament. The aircraft – a 26 ft wide, canvas-winged contraption resembled a cross between a huge white bat and a stagecoach frame. Four large wheels below the wings contained smaller wheels, which held large paddles. The gas engine turned the wheels and paddles, creating both vertical and horizontal blasts of air.
But all was not well in the Texas Foundry. Expectations from his investors had been high. Cannon kept pushing the completion date of the final model back and then back again. Much like his contemporary Nicola Tesla, impatient investors began withholding their money. The desperate Reverend began running his operation on a shoestring budget.
And then, according to several witnesses, the thing actually flew!
In November 1902, on a cool Sunday morning, Gus Stamps and a handful of men who had worked on the Ezekiel Airship, took it out for a test flight in a nearby cow pasture on the edge of town. Ironically, Reverend Cannon wasn’t even there. It was Sunday, therefore, he was off preaching to the human flock rather than those in the air. Stamps was elected as the most knowledgeable to fly the damn thing. He climbed in, looked at his team apprehensively, and started up the Ezekiel’s engine.
According to witnesses, it lurched forward on the bumpy grass, rose up about twelve feet off the ground, then began to drift sideways toward a nearby fence. Stamps had a difficult time controlling it. Then the engine began to vibrate badly and he was forced to cut it off. The airship came to rest across the pasture, about 160 feet (49 meters) from where it started!
“And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.”
Ezekiel 1:19
If the 4 adult witnesses are to be believed, it actually happened. Unfortunately, we will never know for sure as there were no photographs taken, no press announcement, and no repeat flights. Rev. Cannon was very secretive about his engineering processes and kept the press away. The project was rarely mentioned in the Pittsburg Gazette during the 2 years the ship was under construction. It is unknown what Cannon had to say about his team’s test flight.
By the end of 1902, Burrell Cannon was flat broke. Other than the one November lift off, he hadn’t produced what he’d promised: a controllable Ezekiel Airship capable of flying and carrying a payload. The stockholders refused to give him any more money to refine his current model and they wanted nothing more to do with it or the preacher.
Now spurned by the town of Pittsburg, Cannon loaded the Ezekiel Airship onto a railroad flatcar and headed north to preach the gospel and pass the hat for more funds. He was headed for the St. Louis World’s Fair, where a $100,000 reward was offered to anyone who made a sustained controlled flight. But somewhere near Texarkana, a windstorm, some would say of biblical strength, blew the airship off the flatcar and into a rocky ditch, completely destroying it.
A dejected Cannon left the remains of the airship on the rocks where it fell.
Ever the visionary though, the Reverend was not discouraged. He moved to Longview, Texas where he attempted to construct a second airship. For the next eight years, long after the Wright brothers had won the race at Kitty Hawk, Cannon continued to keep tinkering. Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic 120-foot, 12-second flight on December 17th, 1903. They went on over the years to improve upon their famouse flyer.
Cannon did manage to complete a second airship in 1911, creating another corporation and selling even more stock. Apparently, with another pilot at the controls this time, it ran into a nearby telephone pole on its first test flight and was completely destroyed. After a decade without success, a dejected Burrell finally abandoned the Ezekiel Airship for good.
There is no factual documentation that it ever flew. But living witnesses in Pittsburg, as late as the 1960’s swore they saw it fly over that pasture fence near the Foundry where it was built. None of the firsthand witnesses are still alive today. Brothers Aubrey and Parvin Swaim, were small boys in 1902, and told of watching the airship fly in the air wobbly toward a fence on which they were sitting, and how they had to scramble to get clear of the crash. Elizabeth Merrell was thirteen and walking with her friend Agnes when they heard an engine noise and looked up.
“It came up high above the fence row, and I saw it in the air!”
Elizabeth Merrell, Ezekiel Airship witness.
Burrell Cannon’s granddaughter Lenita Tacea said the reason Cannon never flew his airship himself was because, at six feet four and over 220 pounds, he was just too heavy. But had it actually flown? If only there were a newspaper article, or better yet, a single photograph of the flight. In fact, only one photo survives of the Ezekiel Airship. Nevertheless, Burrell did have those few precious witnesses.
In his final years, Cannon was a flat-broke widower, living with his stepdaughter’s family in Longview, Texas. In 1922, a fire sadly destroyed all his plans and drawings for the Ezekiel Airship. At the time of his death at age 74 in 1923, Burrell was still working to invent a new cotton-picker and boll-weevil destroyer. Ever since, Burrell Cannon has sadly been treated as nothing more than a Texas urban legend.
A full scale replica of the Ezekiel Airship is displayed in the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum in Pittsburg. Aviation experts who have studied the replica say they doubt the aircraft ever performed like a real winged airplane. Much like Howard Hughes Spruce Goose, historians agreed the airship might have gotten off the ground and moved through the air. But it was not a controllable machine. Nevertheless, one must admire both the faith, perseverance, and ingenuity of the forgotten inventor Reverend Burrell Cannon.