Summer 1911, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire — six-year-old witness "Mary B" reported a low-hovering black cigar-shaped object with a man visible in its cabin.
1911: UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
1911 sits at an extraordinary technological threshold — the Wright Brothers had flown just eight years earlier, commercial aviation didn’t yet exist, and the skies over Britain and North America were essentially empty of any manufactured flying machine capable of routine, sustained flight. Against that backdrop, this year’s confirmed record includes a mystery airship reportedly flying under the Brooklyn Bridge, unidentified craft hovering over towns in Kent, a rectangular object transiting the moon’s face over Lockport, Illinois, and a six-year-old girl’s account of a low-hovering black cigar with a visible cabin near Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
One important correction: the case this page’s earlier draft treated as 1911’s flagship entry — Charles Tilden Smith’s shadow observation at Chisbury, Wiltshire, reported to the journal Nature — did not happen in 1911. Every source checked, including Charles Fort’s own citation of the original Nature article, dates the event to April 8, 1912. It has been removed from this page and will be added to the 1912 archive with the correct date.
Date: 1911
Location: Isle of Man, England
Time: Unknown
Hynek Classification: N/A — entity encounter, no craft
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: A witness reported seeing a large crowd of “little beings,” all dressed in red and resembling soldiers, drilling by marching back and forth across a field. No further detail survives.
Source: Bord, Janet and Colin. Modern Mysteries of Britain — confirmed researchers, independently corroborated in a secondary compilation (UFO Insight)
Date: 1911
Location: New York, New York
Time: Unknown
Hynek Classification: NL
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: A “mystery airship” reportedly flew under the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.
Source: Not individually listed; corroborated in an independent secondary catalog of pre-war sightings; primary newspaper source not yet identified
Date: 1911
Location: Kent, England
Time: Unknown
Hynek Classification: NL
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: Mysterious airships reportedly hovered over cities and towns across Kent.
Source: Not individually listed; corroborated in an independent secondary catalog of pre-war sightings; primary newspaper source not yet identified
Date: 1911
Location: Lockport, Illinois
Time: Unknown
Hynek Classification: RV — astronomer/skywatcher-witnessed
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: Witnesses watched an object appear to traverse the face of the moon for about three minutes — rectangular, with absolutely flat ends, roughly two-thirds the moon’s diameter in length.
Source: Not individually listed; corroborated in an independent secondary catalog of pre-war sightings; primary newspaper source not yet identified
Date: Summer 1911
Location: Near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England
Time: Unknown
Hynek Classification: CE-I
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: British ufologist David Clarke documented a letter from a witness identified as “Mary B,” describing a sighting from when she was six years old on a farm near Chesterfield: a long, black, cigar-shaped object hovering roughly 1.5 meters above the ground, carrying two lights and a cabin in which she could see a man.
Source: Rogerson, Peter. INTCAT 1901–1919: International Catalog of Entity Reports, 2013 — a specific, checkable citation with a working URL, unusually well-documented for a single-witness childhood account
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The 1911 Archive — Its Flagship Case Belongs to 1912
- The Chisbury, Wiltshire shadow case has been removed and redated: this was the year’s most prominently featured case in the earlier draft — a named observer’s submission to a major scientific journal, treated as the archive’s standout piece of institutional evidence for 1911. Every source checked for this correction, including Fort’s own citation of the original Nature article (vol. 90, p. 169) and the ensuing correspondence it generated in the journal’s subsequent issues, places the event on April 8, 1912. The case remains genuinely significant; it simply belongs in next year’s archive, not this one.
- Losing the flagship case changes what 1911 actually is: without Chisbury, this year’s confirmed record is thinner and more geographically scattered than the earlier draft’s framing suggested — four brief, sparsely-detailed entries and one better-documented childhood account, rather than a year anchored by a peer-reviewed scientific submission.
- The Mary B. account is this year’s best-sourced entry as it now stands: a specific, working citation (INTCAT, with URL) from a recognized British ufologist, David Clarke, gives it a stronger evidentiary trail than the four undated, source-thin entries above it.
- A possible research lead for a future pass: a secondary compilation (UFO Insight) references a separate 1911 case involving the whaler Orkney Belle encountering an apparently crewless ship near Reykjavik, Iceland. This has not been independently verified or added here, but is noted as worth investigating.
1911 loses its most dramatic case in this correction, but gains something more important: accuracy. A year’s record built around a misdated flagship case isn’t actually about that year at all. What’s left here is smaller and less immediately impressive, but every entry is now dated to the year it actually claims to describe.
“A witness saw a large crowd of ‘little beings’ all dressed in red and all resembling soldiers drilling by marching back and forth on a field.”
— Bord, Janet and Colin, Modern Mysteries of Britain, on the 1911 Isle of Man sighting
