Giant Conger Eels

“The four adventurers had just quite the Flying Fish and were walking toward an ancient grass-grown wreck when they became startled by the appearance of a snake like head and a pair of fierce gleaming eyes that had, quite suddenly protruded from a gap in the ships side.

Within moments the conger eel, with truly gigantic proportions, emerged from its hiding place and was slithering, boldly toward the four adventures. This wasn't the only conger eel to do so, thus attracted by the strong light from the Flying Fish forty or so eels, some up to 18 feet long came fiercely towards the four almost over whelming the four.”

The Log of the Flying Fish, Harry Collingwood

Air Ships Mentioned in Adventure in a Age of Invention

Frank Reade was the inventor of many ironclad sea, land ships, and submarines. However, some of his more fantastic inventions were his airships. These airships were kept aloft by a series of horizontal rotors, much like a helicopter. These are a few the airships mentioned in Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention:

• Flying Scud
• Calamaran
• Queen Clipper of the Clouds
• Flight
• Sky Pilot
• Zephyr
• White Cruiser
• Thunderbolt

Although there are many fanciful designs, judging from the illustrations I don’t see how these airships stayed aloft. The bodies of these airships look too bulky and the main rotors, that resemble oriental umbrellas, do not look like they would be all that effective in keeping these airships aloft.
Although I haven’t seen a mention of how these rotors are being driven perhaps they are being driven by some type of chemical reaction, like the Flying Fish in the With Airship and Submarine.

With Airship and Submarine-High Adventure

I have encountered several adventures already in this text, the first notable was the abduction of a Russian aristocrat and the forcible exchange of him for another Russian aristocrat, who happened to be innocent of the charges, imposed upon him, from a Russian prison ship; this a blatant act of piracy.

And now for another adventure, or rather a slight mishap; the professor accidently arouses a fairly large python and becomes entangled and struggles for his life. What other adventures will Collingwood conceive next?

Dr. von Schalchenberg being attacked by a 35 foot python. Image from With Airship and Submarine, Project Guntenberg, HTML version.

The Flying Fish

The Flying Fish is a vessel mentioned in "With Airship and Submarine" by Harry Collingwood. The Flying Fish reminds me of another vessel that is similar to the Flying Fish, one written about in Jules Verne’s “The Master of the World”. Verne’s vessel is named the Terror, which might give you some idea as to the plot of this story, is similar in the Flying Fish in capabilities. Both of these vessels are convertibles and can be propelled either in the water as submarines or in the air as airships.
The Flying Fish as described in “With Airship and Submarine” is cylinder in shape, pointed at both ends and is reported as being 600 feet long and 60 feet in diameter. The Flying Fish is powered by some type of crystals and to this point in my reading these crystals have not been identified.
There aren’t any images of this vessel included within the text, so its exact likeness is unknown, but could this depiction come close to what one could imagine? I will leave that up to your imagination.