Steampunk Pirates 3: The Reades and George Griffith's Stories

I am immensely grateful to MCG and Charlie Cornelius for so quickly putting me on the trail of other pirates/privateers of the steampunk era that I had missed. It shows that even if you are quite skilled in online searching there will always be things that slip through. It has also alerted me to a couple of online resources that steampunk fans might like to follow up if they have not been to these websites before. One is the site MCG mentioned:
http://www.bigredhair.com/frankreade/family.html

This has a lot of details of the Reade family stories and their inventions, primarily airships but also steam-powered robots. There is also information on there about Edward S. Ellis who wrote about a steam-powered robot in 'Steam Man of the Prairies' (1865). It is quite difficult to tease out what is real and what is made-up history, for example in the case of the Boilerplate robot produced by Professor Archibald Campion in 1893.

Another excellent resource is the Fantastic Victoriana website which has a dictionary of a wide range of characters from Victorian novels, focusing on heroic, criminal and inventor characters. This is the electronic version of a book apparently published in 2005. The entries about each character are very detailed and cross-referenced. It is a really good resource if you want to slip in reference to characters from the time in your steampunk stories or your version of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen': http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/vicintro.html

Sorry, back to the Reades. As has been identified, 'The Eclipse' that I stumbled across, is a Reade airship as were the Cloud-Cutter, the Flight, the Catamaran of the Air and the Thunderer. The Reades also built jet packs, helicopters tanks, spaceships, submarines and vehicles which could change form. The stories ran from 1876 and covered the exploits of Frank Reade, Frank Reade Jr., Frank Reade III (they are Americans) and Kate Reade (Frank Reade III's sister) who disappeared in 1944, ending the series. The authors varied, beginning with a Harold Cohen (1854-1927), then Luis Senarens (1863-1939) who started writing the stories at the age of 16.

It has been claimed that Senarens was in correspondence with Jules Verne and they each copied the other's ideas in various ones of their stories, with Verne using Senarens's ideas in 'The Steam House' (1880) which features a steam-powered elephant robot. It is said Senarens used the model of Verne's 'Albatross', the helicopter-airship of 'Robur the Conqueror, or the Clipper of the Clouds' in his own 'Frank Reade, Jr., and His Queen Clipper of the Clouds' (1889). It is claimed Verne borrowed a Reade vehicle for 'Master of the World' and so on. However, as Ron Miller pointed out to me (see his comment below), this appears rather to be modern commentators distorting history. He notes Verne (1828-1905) did not read English well, making correspondence between the two men very difficult and Verne's work was well developed even before Senarens was publishing. Miller also notes that in 1862, before Senarens's birth, Verne had been involved in a group to develop heavier-than-air helicopter style craft and he featured designs by inventors in his circle in his novels. It seems clear that there is a process of American cultural imperialism going on currently to suggest that steampunk stems largely from US roots. Correcting this impression does not diminish what Senarens did, but it allows Verne's reputation as a true innovator to remain unsullied.

These stories are very much in the genre of the Thomas Swift stories that followed through the twentieth century which I have previously mentioned. Jess Nevins on 'Fantastic Victoriana' terms such stories Edisonades, i.e. stemming from the kind of inventive behaviour of Thomas Edison. Many critics point to the racist approach of the stories, in that all the opponents of the young inventor heroes, are non-Whites. However, this charge can be laid at much literature of whatever genre the 19th century. As Nevins notes, such racist characters can be found in the works of Verne and Wells, but science fiction writers of the time were not unique in that. When you had the Kaiser of Germany referring to the 'Yellow peril' of the Chinese and racist legislation not only in the USA but other states, as well, it is unsurprising to find such attitudes, just as we see anti-asylum seeker attitudes in some work today.

The Reades, even more than Verne's characters, are certainly not pirates. As in modern movie making, it is interesting to see that the US audience was not even willing to tolerate the moral ambivalence that we find in Verne's characters. To some degree, though, this is because the Reade stories were produced in weekly magazines for boys, whereas Verne was producing novels for adults. Anyway, for steampunks today, there is a lot to mine from the Reade stories. It would be nice if someone could produce one in which the outdated attitudes of the 19th century were turned on their head, and say, an African-American inventor (or an Afro-German one, as noted before Germany's black population of the 19th century gets very overlooked) uses an airship to release Congolese from repression by the Belgians in the 1880s or Hereros or Himbas to escape from the German genocide in what is now Namibia in the 1900s.

Anyway, to round off this section, another nice picture of a Reade airship, ironically known as the 'White Cruiser', clearly a flying ironclad:

The other writer MCG recommended was George Griffith (1857-1906). By now I was feeling that I must hang my head in shame for not having heard of him before. I did realise that I had read a story by him probably 25 years ago in Michael Moorcock's collections of imaginary fiction from the later 19th/early 20th century: 'Before Armageddon: An Anthology of Victorian and Edwardian Imaginative Fiction Published Before 1914' (1975). In that collection is his story, 'The Raid of Le Vengeur' (1901). I highly recommend reading this anthology and its sequel 'England Invaded' (1977).

Griffith bisects with another area of interest of mine, which is pre-1914 invasion fiction, stories warning about the invasion of Britain by one or other of its European rivals (for comprehensive analysis of such fiction see 'Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763-3749' by I.F. Clarke(1993)). He also wrote what we would now see as classic science fiction with stories of people travelling the solar system and beyond, sometimes as tourists, and also wearing spacesuits. Given he died almost fifty years before this happened, he was very prescient. See 'A Honeymoon in Space' at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19476

Unlike many such authors Griffith lived an adventurous life, circling the World in 65 days and discovering the source of the River Amazon. A number of his stories, such as 'The Romance of Golden Star' (1891) and 'The Virgin of the Sun: A Tale of the Conquest of Peru' (1898) are set in South America.

Griffith's best known novel was 'The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of Coming Terror' (1893) which is set in 1903 and features Russian revolutionaries who create aircraft to challenge the Tsarist system by using aerial bombing (sound familiar?). This shows Griffith's political awareness because in 1905 Russia experienced its first revolution, of course followed by two more in 1917, the first of which overthrew the Tsar. Interestingly, given what was said above about racism in Edisonades, the heroine of the novel, Natasha, the 'angel' of the story, is actually a Jew. In some ways, Griffith is like Wells in being aware of the contemporary context in which his fantasies were being created. For example, 'The Stolen Submarine: A Tale of the Japanese War (1904)' was published at the time of the Russo-Japanese War.

'The Angel of the Revolution' is online at: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602281h.html ; http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/George_Chetwynd_Griffith/The_Angel_Of_The_Revolution/ and at: http://forgottenfutures.com/game/ff7/angel.htm so there is no excuse not to read it.

There was a sequel called 'The Syren of the Skies' or 'Olga Romanoff' (1894). It can be found at: http://forgottenfutures.com/game/ff7/olga.htm

Despite the title 'The Outlaws of the Air' (1895) we do not find steampunk pirates, rather more attempts to build a utopian island in the Pacific. This is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's 'Island' (1962) though with aircraft, including one called the 'Nautilus' featured. You can read this at: http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff9/outlaw.htm Again, we have heroes who want to move to a more peaceful world through the deterrent of airpower rather than raiding as pirates. Perhaps these two things are forever linked.

Other novels by Griffith I cannot find out so much about but you can read his 'The World Peril of 1910' (1907) at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/24764 and the wonderfully titled, 'The Mummy and Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension' (1906) at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19231

The author Michael Moorcock, who I ran into in Oxford back in the mid-1990s when cycling, was very influenced by Griffith and weirdly you find that David Bowie produced an album in 1974 which was set in a post-apocalyptic world and was called 'Diamond Dogs'. In interviews I have also heard that he was influenced by the Gormenghast triology of Mervin Peake as well as George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. However, I do not know if he or someone working on the album was also aware of George Griffith's novel 'The Diamond Dog' published in 1913, seven years after his death.

My quest for steampunk pirates has not really turned up many examples, but for me it has uncovered a lot of literature which not only forms the bedrock of steampunk, but also raises questions about the appropriate approaches and attitudes of technology-focused fiction.

Steampunk Pirates 2: Robur The Conqueror's flag

Following my recent posting about steampunk pirates, I felt that what the internet needed was at least a suggestion of the flag featured in Jules Verne's 'Robur the Conqueror' (1886). I looked around at flags which feature the Sun on them and found a few.

The Flag of Uruguay

This has quite a jolly Man-in-the-Sun image, probably not suited to that of a would-be controller of the World.

The Flag of the Philippines

The Flag of the Republic of China/Taiwan

The Flag of Japan

The Flag of Antigua/Barbuda

The Flag of Kurdistan

Kurdistan is not currently a sovereign state. Its territory would include parts of Iraq, Syria and Turkey. This flag is interestingly reminiscent of the flag of India.

The Flag of Biafra

The Republic of Biafra was a breakaway republic made up of regions of South-East Nigeria and existed 1967-70 before the area was recaptured by federal Nigerian forces.

The Flag of the Aboriginal People of Australia

This flag was created in 1971 by Harold Thomas an Aboriginal artist who sought to create a protest flag that he hoped would unsettle people. The sun and the red earth also seem reminiscent of the landscape of central Australia. The black colour is to represent the Aboriginal people themselves. In 1995 the flag became one of the official flags of Australia. Thomas's intention to unsettle may be why this flag comes close to the one Verne used for Robur.

However, the most 'unsettling' flag bearing a sun symbol must be the flag of the Imperial Japanese Army. The Japanese Imperial Army used the sun flag with rays 1870-1945. The Japanese Navy introduced its own ensign with the sun and rays in 1889 for the Japanese Navy, but with disc off centre and with a different number of rays. It fell into disuse 1947-52 but then was revived as the ensign of the Japanese Navy. This army flag has not come back into use. The self-defence forces of Japan adopted a slightly different model though still referencing the rising sun with rays. The flag of Japan itself is the plain sun disc seen above.

Japanese Naval Ensign

Japanese Imperial Army Standard (1870-1945)

Standard of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces

Given that the Japanese Imperial Army flag was in use for 16 years before Verne wrote his novel, I imagine he would have avoided his looking too much like the Japanese standard. Saying that, though, his move from red and white to black and gold may have been to distinguish them. I have produced a re-coloured version of the Japanese Imperial Army flag to show how I would envisage it:

Robur's Flag?

Possibly the solution came to me by accident. I came across a segment from the Philippines flag with the sun symbol which features on the 'The Makings of an Illustrados' blog: http://themakingsofanillustrados.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/national-flag-day/

The Philippines flag was first created in 1896 when the islands were under Spanish control. When I copied it across, the white background shown on that site turned to black so it seemed to fit the Robur pattern even better:

Segment of Flag of the Philippines on Black Background - Robur's Flag?

This certainly looks like the kind of symbol you would see displayed at the base of some super-villain. No offence meant towards the Philippines.

An Atlas of Imaginary Worlds 4: The Earth Within

Whilst searching for maps of imaginary worlds on the internet I have come across many maps for places which people believed existed but no longer do, notably Atlantis, its rival Lemuria and Mu the equivalent in the Pacific. Another interest is in the theory that the Earth is actually hollow and that there is another world inside this one. This has been a popular theme for authors. Jules Verne wrote 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' in 1864 and I have mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) Pellucidar series: 'At the Earth's Core' (1914), 'Pellucidar (1923) [both of these are available in full online], 'Tanar of Pellucidar' (1928), 'Tarzan at the Earth's Core' (1929), 'Back to the Stone Age' (1937), 'Land of Terror' (1944) and posthumously, 'Savage Pellucidar' (1963). More recently Rudy Rucker wrote 'The Hollow Earth' in 1990 which features a fictional expedition by Edgar Allen Poe to the South Pole in 1836 to discover entry into the Hollow Earth. There is a list of more than 20 hollow Earth books on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Hollow-Earth-Madness/lm/166ZTL24C1WYA

Though the Hollow Earth has been a popular idea for fiction for decades, I was intrigued to find that there were many who held it to be based on fact. There are a variety of religious groups of the internet who quote extensive biblical and other references which they feel point to a Hollow Earth. There was even an exploration planned for this year 26th June-9th July, organised by a man called Steve Currey. The plan was to travel to 84.4 N Latitude, 141 E Longitude and they had charted a Russian icebreaker 'Yamal' to take them there along with up to 100 people who applied at http://www.voyagehollowearth.com/ Unfortunately Currey died before the mission began and it was cancelled.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries there have been reports of people travelling in the Polar regions discovering warm winds and other indications that there is a more temperate location up (or down) there. There is disagreement about what the worlds inside our Earth are like. A key difficulty for people is how it would be lit. One could envisage there may be deep underground caverns, possibly even with entrances at the North and South Poles as some believe (plus other entrances such as Mato Grosso in Brazil and Mount Epomeo in Italy even under the Egyptian pyramids) but they would be rather dark and bleak places, whereas most who believe in the Hollow Earth think there are rich, advanced civilizations down there. The Nazis believed in the theory of the inverted or hollow Earth, termed 'Hohlweltlehre'. The mission to Ruegen Island in April 1942 by Dr. Heinz Fischer was focused on the belief that we were actually on the inside of a concave world. Ironically Nazi Germany's developments in rockets would lead to disproof of that. There are myths of Nazi leaders (presumably led by Martin Borman who disappeared) escaping with 2000 scientists from Germany and Italy who were apparently missing at the end of the Second World War and up to 1 million other people into the interior of the world. This line has been followed in the story, 'Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth' by Max McCoy (2003) which features Indiana and the Nazis racing to find a hidden civilization within the Earth.

There is a group called the International Society for the Complete Earth (ISCE) (http://www.hollow-earth.org/welcome.html) which was set up in 1977 by a former German Second World War submarine commander who, amongst other things, apparently, helped recover the Holy Lance in 1969 and assisted the Hartmann Expedition to Antarctica in 1979 to recover a treasure of Hitler's. The trouble with things on the internet is that this could be a real group (it claims 1000 members across 9 countries) or it could be entirely a spoof for a book or a movie or something, it is so difficult to tell. If it is not a spoof then it would be a great organisation to feature in some modern technology version of 'The Da Vinci Code'.

As I discussed with the inland sea of Australia, in an age when we know all about the World people remain keen to find out that there is more, something that has been overlooked, and certainly in the expectation of advanced civilizations, societies or models of society which are fairer or more decent than our own (or far less decent if they are made up of old Nazis) as an element of hope in our violent selfish world.

A website called Xenophillia has 5 pages of different evidence which proves that a Hollow Earth is impossible: http://www.xenophilia.com/zb0008.htm To me, putting aside issues of the density of the Earth and its structure, there seem basic logistical problems of civilizations inside Earth which appear to be as follows. Without sunlight there cannot be plants and so no food supply for animals or humans to live. I know molluscs can live at volcanic vents deep in the sea and there are blind cave fish but you would need a lot to sustain more than a handful of people for a long time. Authors have suggested that the magma inside the Earth would provide light like the sun, but it is not known to do so in any deep caves any humans have visited. Without plants there would be a lack of oxygen and any creatures would soon die from the carbon dioxide they would generate. I know there are supposed to be large vents but basically any settlement would have to be ground around these and then why not live on the surface where all of this stuff is so much easier? We are always discovering new species, they thought the coelacanth was extinct but then they caught one in 1938 again in 1952 off South Africa and in 1998 off Sumatra. Then in 2005 remains of the so-called 'hobbit' race alive in Indonesia up to 18,000 years ago, about 12,000 years after the Neanderthals and Homo Erectus had gone. So, I am not saying there are not mysteries to be discovered, but that the logistics of a hollow Earth just do not add up. The Earth is probably about 80% the size it was once it first gained a crust due to internal cooling. There is also evidence to suggest it has expanded and contracted throughout its history suggesting it is a ball of molten rock at least gradually cooling. Below are illustrations of different views of how people think a hollow Earth would work:

This model below comes from John C. Symmes (1780-1829) who, like Edmund Halley (1656-1742 - discoverer of Halley's Comet) envisaged a series of concentric spheres inside the Earth:

Photos from Apollo 8 and Apollo 16 suggest to some people that there is a big chip in the North Pole which opens into the interior. This certainly makes Earth look like a soft-boiled egg. There is also a map of where people think the entrance will be:

The Steampunk Genre

Anyone who has read my posts will know I am interested in 'what if?' history whether as a tool for testing history or as an entertainment. Related to that in my interests is what is called 'steampunk', which refers to novels, movies, artwork. For those unfamiliar with this, here is some background.


We have to go back to 1984 when the book 'Neuromancer' by William Gibson was published. Gibson is seen as the 'father of Cyberpunk', though others had already contributed to it, such as Philip K. Dick, publishing from 1950s onwards, who died in 1982 (many of whose books have become movies such as 'Blade Runner', 'Total Recall', 'Paycheck', 'Through A Mirror Darkly') and John Brunner a science fiction author publishing since the late 1960s. Gibson envisaged a dystopian world of the near future with two important characteristics. First that people could physically connect to the internet and send their consciousness into it in order to conduct business or hack. Second, that people would have cybernetic enhancements, such as blades coming from their fists or cameras in their eyes. This latter element Gibson did not invent but what he did was give it a 'sexier' edge. So you had the 'cyber' of cybernetics and the punk of very urban, dirty, sprawling cities. In particular, Gibson's portrayal of a high-tech world dominated by huge, amoral corporations called zaibatsu (the Japanese word for such corporations) seemed to really chime with 1980s 'greed is good' culture. Gibson continued writing with 'Count Zero' (1986), 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' (1988), 'Burning Chrome' (1986 - a short story collection) being the core of his cyberpunk work. I find Gibson's work good on ideas but rather clunky in construction.

Other good cyberpunk autors, if you are interested, include Walter Jon Williams, Lewis Shiner (a European angle on Cyberpunk with references to Michael Moorcock's work too), George Alec Effinger (whose Cyberpunk stories have an interesting Middle Eastern take on the genre) and Bruce Sterling. Sterling is an all round writer who includes historical as well as science fiction stories and I feel his writing is smoother than Gibson's. His 1980 'The Artificial Kid' predates Gibson's work, and whilst not set on Earth has many cyberpunk elements.


Right, you may ask what has all this cyberpunk got to do with steampunk? Well, in 1990, Gibson and Sterling jointly wrote a book called 'The Difference Engine' which envisaged a mid-Victorian Britain in which technology, notably Charles Babbage's computer (the Difference Engine) which in reality was experimented on in the 1840s, was a success and led to a computer age in the mid-19th century (so a kind of 'what if?' which as you know, appeals to me). [Difference engines had been proposed as early as 1786 and after Babbage, Per Georg Scheutz built a number in the 1850s including one he sold to the British Government.] The expansion of computing leads to other things like the streamlining of traction engines for racing and the British House of Lords becomes filled with inventors and explorers rather than simply noblemen who have inherited their titles. This is seen as the first steampunk book, like the cyberpunk books exploring a world where technology is key and creates turmoil in a society of conflicting pressures.


There are older roots to the genre. There was a US TV series 'Wild Wild West' which was a TV series which ran for 4 seasons 1965-9. It seems to have been set between the end of the American Civil War and 1875 and Grant is the President (1869-77) shown. The heroes' nemesis, Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless, is supposed to have died in 1880. The spark of the original series was rather overshadowed by a couple of really dull TV movies in the 1980s using original cast members who were pretty old by then, and the rather failed 'Wild Wild West' (1999) movie with Will Smith and Kevin Kline, though it gives you a flavour of the original with their private train and the technology that they had. The first three series were darker and shot in black and white, but matching trends in US television at the time by the end of the run it became more 'camp' as have been the subsequent movies. However, they all included various Steampunk equipment such as concealed guns and a stage coach with an ejector seat. The attempts to dismember the USA as featured in the movie plots are common 'what if?' history scenarios (see also 'The Mask of Zorro' (1998)). After this series there seems to have been little interest in Steampunk in the USA until the 1990s.


In novels you have to mention Ronald W. Clark's 1969 novel 'Queen Victoria's Bomb' which envisages an atomic bomb being developed in the 1830s, testing in India and almost used in the Crimean War. Michael Moorcock's books 'Warlord of the Air' (1971), 'The Land Leviathan' (1974) and 'The Steel Tsar' (1981) also featured what can be termed Steampunk elements. In addition, by having Oswald Bastable as the hero of these books, a character who appears as a child in E. Nesbitt's 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers', Moorcock established the Steampunk approach of having characters from other authors' stories featuring as genuine people (alongside historical people too, as Clark had done extensively), a trend taken further by Alan Moore's graphic Steampunk novel, 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (starting 1999). The the thread goes back even beyond these novels of course.


It can be argued that the real originators of steampunk were Victorian authors themselves. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells with their stories set in contemporary times to them but featuring huge airships, large submarines, tanks, flying motorbikes, a tunnel under the English Channel (as well as more fantastical devices to travel in time or to the Moon or make people invisible) built on the rush of technology throughout the 19th century and took their envisaging further, usually to look at moral issues in such a context, and like the steampunk authors, looking at the dilemmas that such technologies bring. These stories directly influence steampunk authors today, though their morals questions tend to be more direct and simpler than their Victorian predecessors.


What appeals to readers of steampunk is that it is technology but with elegance. In contrast to the sleek chrome of the model day it is brass and iron cast into elaborate shapes. Just look at any movie version of 'The Time Machine', it depicts a machine of elegance, all spinning, with inlaid knobs and polished buttons. In addition, in contrast to the cyberpunk novels which tend to portray people as playthings of vast multinational corporations, the heroes of steampunk are often ordinary people who can invent, they turn out a flying machine in the shed in the garden. Whilst this can be seen as very British, it has appeal in the USA for readers looking back to Ford or the Wright Brothers and their developments. However, the greatest success has been in Japan and from there have come notable steampunk movies such as 'Steamboy' (2005 - set in the UK) and 'Howl's Moving Castle' (2005) based on British author Diana Wynne Jones's 1986 novel of the same name.


Cyberpunk and steampunk have faded from their positions on the bestseller lists that they held in the 1980s and 1990s, but they have now effectively entered the mainstream. Graphic novelists have taken them up, notably in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentleman' (Alan Moore's novel and a 2003 movie). Cyberpunk has informed how we view the internet (Gibson is credited with inventing the word 'cyberspace') and are likely to view cybernetic implants (especially the potential for dehumanisation from them) and the position of the individual in relation to corporations. Steampunk is likely to have less impact, but my affection for it probably reflects me being British and so an in-built nostalgia for past things. Its impact is most likely to be in the style of items in the future and you can already see examples of people 'steampimping' their computers, much in the same way that people in the 1970s put their televisions in ornate wooden cabinets and those of the 1980s put their video cassettes in fake leather book covers.


In the meantime, for anyone interested in 'what if?' and 'why not?' in history, I recommend steampunk stories. To blow my own trumpet I intend to put a short story in that genre on this blog in coming weeks.

P.P. 26/10/2009: Despite my efforts at the time of writing this posting I have realised that I had missed out a vital slice of the history of the development of the steampunk genre.  This was the first use of the term steampunk, which was by author K.W. Jeter writing to the science fiction magazine, 'Locus' in April 1987, so preceding 'The Difference Engine' by four years.  According to wikipedia, Jeter was looking for an umbrella term for novels of the time, 'The Anubis Gates' (1983) by Tim Powers, 'Homunculus' (1986) by James Blaylock and 'Morlock Night' (1979) and 'Infernal Devices' (1987) that he had written himself which were set in the 19th century and took on board elements of the speculative writing naturally in the style of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and so included anachronistic technology.  Thus, of course, steampunk even in its latest manifestation predated cyberpunk, but that term was so snappy you can see why Jeter thought it was a good one to mutate for the genre he was writing in and certainly better than the description of Powers, Blaylock and Jeter writing in the so-called 'gonzo-historical manner'!  Michael Moorcock noted this year (2009) that there is actually little 'punk' in most steampunk writing and he favours 'steam opera'.