Collingwood, Harry
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of UK civil engineer and author William Joseph Cosens Lancaster (1843-1922), most of whose fiction – he wrote at least 40 books – was for boys and featured nautical settings. He remains best known for his "Flying Fish" sequence of sf tales: The Log of the "Flying Fish": A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure (1887), With Airship and Submarine: A Tale of Adventure (1907) and The Cruise of the "Flying Fish": The Airship-Submarine (1924). The eponymous vehicle is a ship whose construction is made possible by Professor von Schalckenburg's two Inventions: a metal alloy many times stronger and lighter than any other yet known; and a new source of energy (see Power Sources) contained in crystals which can also be used to blow up enemies. The 600-foot-long vehicle operates in the air as an armoured aircraft (see Airships), on the surface as a ship and Under the Sea as a submarine, and takes von Schalckenburg and his companions back and forth across the Earth on travels evocative of the early Jules Verne, leading them to a Lost World at the North Pole, to inner Africa, to submerged treasures, and elsewhere. The third volume, in which a dreadnought successor to the ship fails to be built in time to affect World War One, is anticlimactic.
Also of interest is Through Veld and Forest: An African Story (dated 1914 but 1913), whose young protagonists find a Lost Race in southern Africa ruled by a She-like empress who has gained Immortality and counts among her subjects a subspecies of missing links (see Apes as Human). To contemporary eyes, the usual defacements of British boys' fiction of this era – unthinking Imperialism, relentless slaughter of wildlife, complacent racism – are perhaps intensified by the author's vitriolic attacks on trade unions and other sins of the British working classes. [JC]
William Joseph Cosens Lancaster
born Weymouth, Dorset: 23 May 1843
died Chester, Cheshire: 10 June 1922
works
series
"Flying Fish"
- The Log of the "Flying Fish": A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure (Glasgow, Scotland: Blackie and Son, 1887) ["Flying Fish": hb/Gordon Browne]
- With Airship and Submarine: A Tale of Adventure (Glasgow, Scotland: Blackie and Son, 1907) [dated 1908 but published 1907: "Flying Fish": hb/]
- The Cruise of the "Flying Fish": The Airship-Submarine (London: Sampson, Low, 1924) ["Flying Fish": hb/]
individual titles
- Geoffrey Harrington's Adventures (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1907) [hb/]
- Harry Escombe: A Tale of Adventure in Peru (Glasgow, Scotland: Blackie and Son, 1910) [hb/]
- The Adventures of Dick Maitland: A Tale of Unknown Africa (Glasgow, Scotland: Blackie, 1912) [Lost Race: hb/Alec Bell]
- Through Veld and Forest: An African Story (Glasgow, Scotland: Blackie and Son, 1913) [dated 1914 but published 1913: hb/]
- A Pair of Adventurers in Search of El Dorado (London: Sampson, Low, 1915) [hb/]
- In Search of El Dorado (London: Sampson, Low, 1925) [vt of the above: hb/]
- The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn (Glasgow, Scotland: Blackie and Son, 1922) [hb/C M Padday]
links
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