Six books in and Howard Garis is still shimmying his way around the suggestion of a formula. Thus far, the majority of these books have unfolded in or around home base in Shopton, New York, but with occasional trips away. Most have also revolved around Tom either acquiring or building a new vehicle and then having an adventure in it. The most overt exception has been 'Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat', which started in a substitute home base on the east coast and then switched to a farflung location, that time off Uruguay, for an away adventure.

This one doesn't do anything the first five didn't but it organises its parts very differently and, in doing so, could easily have set up a new template. We start out in Shopton but with Tom's newest invention already established, so he can use it when he shifts to a substitute home base for much of the first half. Then, during a test flight, he's caught by a hurricane and hurled way off course to encounter the titular adventure awaiting that's him in a farflung location. Almost all of this feels entirely appropriate, only the outrageous conveniences of the final third letting the book down.

The invention is a monoplane, which Tom has called the 'Butterfly'. He's already been around the country in her and even won an altitude prize. However, it's not going to be the appropriate form of transport in every instance, so, when Eradicate Sampson arrives with a telegram from Hosmer Fenwick of Philadelphia, asking for help with the electric airship he's having trouble with, he takes his electric car into Mansburg to wire back that he'll happily do what he can. Apparently, Barton's heard of the man and Wakefield Damon used to go to school with him.

That means that Damon tags along for the ride, which takes them two hours and twenty minutes and leaves them on a sports field in north Philadelphia. The flight went well until the very end, when the engine cut out and Tom had to volplane down, but Fenwick is drawn in by the crowds and thus meets them right there in the field. His airship is the 'Whizzer' and it's a beast. Tom figures out in a test that the motor isn't powerful enough, but by that point he's already fully engaged with the work and we know he'll follow through, doing what he does, until it's the best it can be.

So far so good and I'm not going to complain about the subplot with Mary Nestor, who I believe is still a friend rather than a girlfriend, even though that label is surely going to be applied soon. In this book, he nearly runs her over on the way to Mansburg and finds that she's on her own, as her parents are taking a trip to the West Indies. She's heading into town too to hire a cook for when a bevy of girl friends come to stay, so he drops her at the intelligence office. She soon hires Bridget, an Irish cook "afeared of thim things", meaning automobiles. However, she does enjoy her ride in Tom's to get to Mary's, so he's made one convert already.

Tom starts in Shopton and pops back a couple of times, first to pick up more specialised tools and then to take advantage of Bridget's apple turnovers. Mary promises they're outstanding. It's on that trip that the negative side of the book manifests, both in the sense that it's a bad thing in a story that's otherwise been entirely about good things and in the sense that Andy Foger's stupid vendetta is getting rather annoying.

This time out, Tom catches him in his monoplane shed, after he leaves the burglar alarm off. He's slashed the canvas of the 'Butterfly' and even taken an axe to the propellor, presumably causing an expensive amount of damage, on top of rendering the plane unflyable in this condition. This is criminal damage (and trespassing), laid on top of the kidnapping in the previous book, so we're in serious territory already, without the police ever being called. At this rate, we surely can't be far away from these two shooting each other in the back of the head. I'm tempted, myself.

Thus far, everything has been along the lines of what we tend to see in 'Tom Swift' novels that are set at home base or a substitute for it. There's a little of that in Shopton, though mostly to tie to the regulars of the series. There's plenty more of it in Philadephia, where Tom takes his time and fixes or improves what Fenwick has done with the 'Whizzer'. He improves the motor, of course, as it's never going to fly the way it is; changes the gas in use too; and makes a thousand other more minor tweaks and alterations. And eventually he takes the 'Whizzer' up for a test flight.

At this point, we haven't even reached halfway but everything seems settled and that's no place for a 'Tom Swift' novel. There are no enemies here in Philadelphia, though few friends either, our time spent tinkering. Andy Foger is a long way away in Shopton and this time out he doesn't leave it just to mess with Tom. And so the adventure has to manifest in the air, with one detail already telegraphed if you paid close enough attention to notice it, and it does. It doesn't happen on the initial test flight but on a longer one taken after it, the goal being Cape May, New Jersey, where Fenwick can drop a message to a friend who didn't believe in the 'Whizzer'.

However, the wind is up and it soon builds to serious levels, until Tom can't fight it or escape it. He has to turn into the wind and let the full force of it blow them where it will. And, given that we're in a hurricane now, that means a couple thousand miles out at up to a hundred and fifty miles per hour. As you might imagine, that doesn't do an electric airship any good and, gas bag ripped, the 'Whizzer' is forced to volplane down onto an island, the first of a string of coincidences that seem increasingly unbelievable. This one's a stretch and it's just the first.

I won't go much further with this synopsis, because there's still half a book to go and I don't want to spoil everything, but I will highlight a few details. The most immediately apparent is that they aren't alone there, Tom and Fenwick and Wakefield Damon. A yacht, the 'Resolute', has sunk and stranded its occupants there, too; Barcoe Jenks immediately the most suspicious. There are nine survivors all told, bringing the count up to twelve, and, if you're paying attention, you can name two more of them without any help from me.

A second detail is that the way they're going to escape what is effectively a desert island is given away by the book's very title. I'm also sure you can imagine where the wireless comes from that is put to this purpose. However, there's an interesting note here, because the message Tom sends is not "SOS". That's because this novel was published in 1911 and the standards were still being set. Telegraphers had used "CQ" as their distress call and, in 1904, Marconi, added a "D" to the end to be the standard for ships using their equipment. Thus "CQD".

Radio was becoming a big deal around this point and in time, in 1906, the inaugural International Radiotelegraphic Convention was held in Berlin. It chose to adopt the German distress call, known as "Notzeichen", as the standard for Morse Code. It used three dots, three dashes and three dots and soon became known as "SOS", because that's how those letters are tapped. Over time, this is the distress call that became the international standard, but it took time. The radio operator on the 'Titanic', Jack Phillips, initially used "CQD" but his junior, Harold Bride, joked that it might be his last chance to use the new code, so they alternated between "CQD" and "SOS".

And that highlights just how early this book is, something that keeps getting hammered home to me as I work through the series. The first wireless distress call, made by a lightship off England in 1899, didn't have a standard to rely on. The first in America, off Nantucket in 1905, simply used the letters for "HELP" in both International Morse and American Morse. Apparently, we hadn't even standardised Morse code yet. The first American use of "CQD" was in 1908, with the first "SOS" in 1909 and both were used for a little while yet, along with "XXX", meaning urgent but not quite so urgent as "SOS". That Tom Swift used "CQD" here in 1911 is entirely appropriate.

For more on this, checkout the "Distress Calls" page at the Naval Marine Archive.

https://navalmarinearchive.com/research/docs/sos.html

The final detail I'll mention isn't a spoiler because it really has no bearing on how this book wraps up in the slightest, but presumably sets up the next book. It's also why Barcoe Jenks appears to be so suspicious when the 'Whizzer' crashes onto the island soon after the survivors of the 'Resolute' wash up there. He has diamonds, half a million dollars worth of them, and he promises to make a quarter of a million's worth for Tom if he gets him off the island. Yes, make. Apparently, this ties to the secret of Phantom Mountain and it's what we'll get into in 'Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers' next month. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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