Meteorite Sword from Outer Space

Whether you’re into sci-fi or fantasy, I have a story for you. Let’s talk about a real life sword from outer space.

This week the guys at the Drunk in Public Domain podcast are screening the infamous 1959 Ed Wood film (and oft-cited worst movie ever made) Plan 9 from Outer Space. It has aliens, zombies, a woman named “Vampira” and the actor Bela Lugosi, who died 3 years before the film. It’s not only the film Jerry Seinfeld planned to go see in the famous Chinese restaurant episode, but also one that Fox Mulder from the X-Files claimed to have watched a whopping 42 times. I’ll be listening in. I highly recommend checking out their show. It’s always entertaining and a great way to experience public domain film and music.

In keeping with this outer space theme, today we’re talking about a Meteorite Sword from Outer Space. More specifically, we’re talking about James Sowerby (1757-1822), and his outer space sword which still exists today.

James Sowerby

James Sowerby was an English naturalist, illustrator and mineralogist who produced an impressive corpus of work. One of his projects titled English Botany (1790-1814) is a 36 volume masterpiece, with 2,592 hand-coloured engravings which he labored on it for 23 years. He is also the founding father of what might be the most important family of illustrators to ever exist: the Sowerby family of naturalists/illustrators. His children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and so on would continue his work. Additionally he developed a color theory based on yellow, red and blue called A New Elucidation of Colours (1809).

He also illustrated many, many gorgeously vibrant drawings of minerals. We restored and put together 36 of them into a collection below.

The takeaway here is that James Sowerby was such a fascinating guy that he never needed a sword from space to be interesting. The sword is just the galactic icing on the cake.

So let’s get to this sword story…

"Other Stuff" From Space

(or scaring the hell out of John Shipley)

During James Sowerby’s time, it was mostly unknown what was out there. A sun, a moon, stars… and what? Was it just… space?

Well, no. We now know there is plenty of other stuff out there too. At around 3 o’clock on the 13th of December 1795 just outside of the town of Wold Cottage in Yorkshire, England, a piece of that “other stuff” came hurtling through our atmosphere at an unfathomable velocity and slammed into the earth within a few yards of ploughman John Shipley. It created a crater, and presumably scared the hell out of the guy. A stone was found embedded seven inches deep into the chalk under the topsoil, warm and smoking.

Almost getting killed by a space rock would be a weird day for anyone, but it must have been an even weirder day for John because nobody knew anything came from space at that time. A rock from space was a brand new idea. The first publication that surmised that meteorites may have originated in space and not on Earth was only published in 1794 by German physicist Ernst Florens Chladni, and his research was widely ridiculed for almost a decade.

Sowerby's Museum

Science caught up eventually, and James Sowerby acquired the stone from Wold Cottage (the first recorded English meteorite) in 1804. At his private but free to the public museum on the grounds of his London home the meteorite became a favorite attraction. Sowerby wanted to share his curiosity for discovery, and what better way to do that than by allowing the public to marvel at a celestial object? The meteorite brought in flocks of visitors, and Sowerby wasn’t afraid to cut off specimens from the stone to trade with other collectors.

Eventually Sowerby’s collection held more meteorite samples. Some were made of stone like the Wold Cottage, and some were made of iron. One of these iron meteorites was the Cape of Good Hope meteorite discovered in the 18th century in the Dutch Cape Colony in southern Africa, where it was originally erroneously believed to be part of a ship’s anchor.

A Sword from Space

In 1814 Sowerby had the wild idea to make a sword out of the Cape of Good Hope meteorite.

1814 marked the end of the Napoleonic wars. France had been defeated, Napoleon abdicated and various sovereigns planned on visiting England to celebrate the end of the war. This included the Emperor of Russia, Alexander I. Sowerby thought that a sword made from a space rock would make for an interesting gift, and obviously he was completely right!

Sowerby had a very small window of time to get his gift prepared and presented. He managed to have the sword crafted in two days, but wasn’t able to catch the emperor in person. It was a challenge to get the sword to the emperor, and it took 5 years to receive a response. In 1819 Sowerby heard back that the sword was well received and he was gifted a diamond ring in return. The sword is housed in the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, and the ring likely still resides with a descendant of James Sowerby.

Outer space is still a realm of unknowns, so I rather like the idea of a meteorite sword. This sword’s material came from out there, and perhaps that origin carries with it *something* from beyond…

(the X-Files theme song should play in your head now)