Howard Garis, the man behind the house name of Victor Appleton for the majority of the original run of 'Tom Swift', wrote five of those books in 1910 and this fourth of them feels like it's setting a tone for the rest of the series. I have no idea if that's true or not so  I might find myself eating my words later, but it takes the things that the earlier three books did right and focuses them onto a single adventure. That means a new title vehicle, of course, but also plenty of engineering, with a set of trials and errors that provide the most believable danger.

That single adventure is set in place right at the beginning of the novel, having been set up in the previous book, 'Tom Swift and His Airship'. Barton Swift is on the New Jersey sea coast, staying at a "temporary residence" that he's hired for the season. Tom and Mr. Sharp visit in the Red Cloud, the airship they only built a book earlier but which is already shifting from novelty to workhorse, and they park it in a large tent. The submarine is in a large shed and, with every Tom Swift novel that passes, I find myself more jealous about the Swift family's ever-expanding storage facilities.

The stated goal for the submarine last time out was government trials, as fifty thousand dollars are on the line for the right vehicle. It's as they're talking plans for engineering details that Tom reads about a treasure ship that's just sunk off Montevideo. Never mind the government money, why not aim for six times that in gold bullion. It's supposedly unrecoverable, due to the depth of the wreck and the treacherous currents around it, but surely the 'Boldero' would be a much more comprehensive test for Barton's new submarine! And so they're set.

This submarine is called the 'Advance' and it's cigar-shaped, a hundred-feet long and twenty wide, at its greatest diameter. It has a well-thought-out design that's taken Barton two books to finish up, beginning with its separation into many watertight compartments for safety. The new tech is the electrical plates it uses for motion, what's called a MHD accelerator nowadays, that acronym standing for magnetohydrodynamic. In case that doesn't work as hoped, it also has a traditional set of screws and propellers. Its hull has three layers and its windows are extremely thick. There's an airlock, of course, but also a crane, electrical weapons and machinery to distill seawater into fresh. It can theoretically descend three miles and it can remain underwater for a month.

In other words, it's a serious piece of engineering and we can only hope that they don't drive into something on their first time out. That shtick is getting old. Instead, the first crisis is created by a human being, inevitably Andy Foger, who really has no business being in New Jersey at all; while the second, encountered during their initial underwater tests, is a powerful reminder of just how dangerous this inventing business can be. Given that the natural response to reading this series for teenage boys across America is to go out and build things, that's a vastly important lesson to drum home.

While Garis pandered to tradition by including Andy Foger, whose second appearance is far more appropriate (and satisfying) than the first, he thankfully doesn't also bring the Happy Harry gang back for another outing. They were worthy foes in the first book but their story arc was hopefully ended by the time the third wrapped up. Instead, we get a new enemy, for want of a better term, in the form of Addison Berg and the company he represents, Bentley & Eagert. They're up for the government prize too, so start out almost as corporate spies, but they switch to the treasure ship as well, after overhearing the Swifts' plans, becoming more traditional rivals.

I was of two minds about these folk. Initially, they're exactly what they need to be, but there's an impression that they care more about defeating Barton Swift than winning the prize. That's odd but, if they return in future books as I'm guessing they will, that angle could have serious legs. I'd bet that this professional rivalry could take multiple stories to fully develop and last longer as an active threat, certainly more believably than an ongoing conflict with a simple gang of thieves. I look forward to finding out if that's going to be the case or whether they were just the villains of the month. The downside is that their threat here dissipates a little early for full effect.

I should mention the crew, because it's what you might expect but not quite. Barton Swift is there, of course, because the 'Advance' is his vessel. Tom joins him, as does Mr. Sharp, who's become one of the team at this point, as if he had no other commitments that might keep him away. They hire a captain, because they're not stupid, and that turns out to be an old salt called Alden Weston, an impressive character who fits in rather well. To round out the crew—bless my liver!—is Wakefield Damon, who I do enjoy as a regular but, rather like Andy Foger, has to be shoehorned into this in thoroughly convenient fashion. There are definitely trends I'm going to keep my eye on.

While that annoying convenience is probably the worst aspect of this book, the other downside is a chance encounter with the Brazilians that goes south very quickly indeed. Literal crossed wires have given Barton and Sharp an electric shock, so they surface to recover and there, right in front of them, is a Brazilian warship. Before you know it, they're all arrested, court martialled (though I'm not sure how that works for civilians) and sentenced to be shot to death. Now, I've read worse depictions of foreign militaries in adventure novels, but that doesn't make this one a good one. It plays into banana republic stereotypes and lessens this story to posterity.

Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The submarine is a worthy vessel and, while I certainly didn't dislike the airship, I felt the 'Advance' and the treasure hunt story it explores played much more realistically and credibly  than the 'Red Cloud' and the bank robbery angle in the prior book. Sure, there's an octopus! What sort of submarine adventure story wouldn't have an octopus? I'm on board with some stereotypes, especially in books from a hundred and fifteen years ago before Hollywood milked a lot of them to death.

Minor notes include the odd idea that the nearest town on the New Jersey coast to their base of operations is called Atlantis. It's not on my maps but, then again, neither is Shopton. Also, there doesn't seem to be a prime meridian in play here, because the coordinates don't quite work with Greenwich. I bumped into the idea of different meridians recently reading Verne's 'A Journey to the Centre of the Earth' in 'Amazing Stories', but that was published before 1884 when the prime meridian was chosen. This came much later, so it seems odd to use Washington as a meridian, not to mention ironic, given that that's where Greenwich was chosen as the prime meridian.

Next month, 'Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout', which will surely involve the new, very fast car that Tom acquires after they deposit their three-hundred grand in the Shopton bank. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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