Text 1: Across the estuary, by Nia Bell

An original contemporary newspaper feature.

The launch leaves the harbour with twelve of us aboard. Its hull is narrow and bright, and the crew tell us it will rise clear of the water once we are moving quickly enough. I have crossed this estuary in ordinary ferries since I was a child, but never like this. The launch looks as if it has mistaken the sea for a runway.

At first, nothing happens except noise. The engines rattle under the deck and the windows tremble in their frames. I hold the rail although we are still tied to the quay. Then the ropes are released. The launch gathers speed, and the water seems to fall away beneath us. A moment later we are skimming above it, steady as a table.

I had expected the crossing to feel like a stunt. Instead, I find myself watching the shoreline slide past and wondering whether I could do this commute every morning. The crew point out the islands, but I am more interested in the strip of water below the window, which looks almost close enough to touch.

At the far landing, a woman in a wool hat is waiting for the ordinary ferry. She watches us step ashore and says, ‘That looked very fast. I’ll keep my feet on the water, thank you.’ I laugh, though I notice she has not moved towards the launch.

The return trip is bumpier. The hull drops hard twice, and a child beside me grips his father’s sleeve. The crew say the waves have changed since the morning. I am no longer imagining a daily commute. When we reach the harbour, I step onto the quay with relief, then turn to look at the launch again. It is already lifting its nose for the next crossing.

Text 2: The world beneath us, by Eleanor Fayne

An original diary account written in an eighteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this diary account, written in 1786, a woman describes her first ascent in a passenger balloon.

From a distance, the balloon appeared magnificently round and certain of itself. Beneath it hung a basket scarcely large enough for two people and a folded blanket. As I crossed the meadow towards it, the crowd opened a path and began to applaud. I wished they would not. It is uncomfortable to have several hundred strangers cheering while one is still considering escape.

My companion climbed in after me, and the men around us took hold of the ropes. I had imagined our departure as a violent leap. Instead, at a signal I did not hear, their hands opened and the meadow quietly withdrew. There was no sensation of climbing. The people simply grew smaller, their cheers thinning until they sounded like rain in another street.

Soon the town lay complete beneath us. Streets I had walked for years became pale lines; gardens fitted neatly behind houses; the river turned in the sunlight like a strip of beaten metal. I could see the church tower, yet its bell reached us faintly and too late. For the first time, I understood that noise belongs to the ground. Above it, even the flame that warmed the air seemed mannerly.

We entered a cloud. The town, fields and river vanished together, and drops of water gathered on my sleeves. With no earth below and no sky above, the basket seemed to hang in an empty room. I asked my companion whether we were lost. He replied that the cloud was passing, although it seemed to me that it was we who had passed out of the world.

Then the whiteness tore open. Sunlight poured across the basket, and the cloud spread below us like a second country. I was sorry when my companion said it was time to descend. We came down in a meadow several miles from where we had begun, startling a farmer who had been eating his dinner beneath a hedge. The basket tipped gently onto its side, and I lay laughing against the blanket while he asked which road we had taken.

That evening, my family wanted to know whether I had been frightened. I told them that I had, for perhaps a minute, but that fear was the least important part of the journey. The ceiling above our supper table seemed oppressively near. During the night I went repeatedly to the window and searched the sky. Nothing crossed the moon, and I was disappointed.