Cromwell Mortimer and the first modern era UFO Sighting

With the nights rapidly drawing in towards winter, some of us are more able to spend time outside to look up at the starry skies, observing the moon, planets and various phenomena as well the aeroplanes and satellites. Perhaps we might even see an unidentified flying object. We tend to think of these as being modern day events and whilst sightings of UFO’s certainly soared in the mid 20th century, reporting of them goes back considerably further and in London to the early 18th Century.

Cromwell Mortimer, a well-known physician, was on his way home from work as he was walking through the streets of Westminster, Central London, in December 1742. It was then that he saw something totally strange seemingly floating in the sky.

The physician, who at the time was serving as the secretary of the Royal Society, quickly sketched out what he had seen. As published four years later in the Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XLIII, Mortimer said he saw the mysterious object flying over London’s famous St James’s Park.

He wrote: “As I was returning home from the Royal Society to Westminster, on Thursday, December 16, 1742, at 20:40, being about the middle of the parade in St James’s Park. I saw a light arise from behind the trees and houses in the south by west point, which I took at first for a large skyrocket. But when it had risen to the height of about 20 degrees, it took a motion nearly parallel to the horizon, but waved in this manner, and went on to the N by E point over the houses.”

Explaining the object’s trajectory, Mortimer said he saw it fly over London’s iconic Bloomsbury district before passing over Queen’s Square and then heading off towards the canal adjacent to it. After that, Mortimer said he’d ‘lost sight of it over the Haymarket’.

The physician continued: “Its motion was so very slow, that I had it above half a minute in view; and had time enough to contemplate its appearance fully.” He added that the UFO ‘seemed to be a light flame, turning backwards from the resistance the air made to it” and that “a bright fire like burning charcoal, enclosed as it were in an open case’ of which the frame was ‘quite opaque – like bands of iron’.

He also described the UFO as issuing forth a ‘train, or tail of light flame’. He concluded that the ‘head’ of the object ‘seemed about half a degree in diameter; the tail near three degrees in length, and about one-eighth of a degree in thickness.’

Although some sceptics have tried to dismiss the sighting as either ball lightning or a meteor, they have failed to take into account that such rare occurrences don’t appear for more than a few seconds, while what Mortimer saw is believed to have lasted around 30 seconds. 

Apparently, Mortimer wasn’t the only one to see it. British UFO expert Steve Mera said Mortimer’s report was ‘the first of its kind’. He said: “Folk stood out on a balcony witnessed it. These folk were well to do which encouraged proper research into it.”