"The French Connection"...

Croydon Airport, Southern England, 1923. Aviation was still pretty new, with planes made mostly out of plywood and canvas. Crossing the channel could be done from the deck of a luxury liner, or for a daring few, in a propeller-driven tent, with 2 leather seats and a sense of direction. The pilots were just mechanics with benefits, but they had an understanding and a kinship with their craft. Radios crackling, announcing Ginger was trying to get in touch with Biffo, navigating not with satellites but with sightlines and basic instinct.

Part of this brave, new world was a chap called Frederick Stanley Mockford, an ordinary duty radio officer, who was given the task of solving a deceptively simple problem. "What do we say when we have a serious problem?"

The international distress code at the time was S.O.S, tapped out in Morse code. Effective-ish (though sadly not for the S.S. Titanic) but slow, a bit mechanical, and perhaps the biggest issue - the person receiving the 6 dots and 3 dashes had to speak fairly fluent Morse. It wasn't quite apt for this new age of "all things new fangled", as Mr Carson would say at Downton Abbey.

They really wanted a word. Or a phrase, but kept bumping heads about from which side of the Channel the language would come. The British would never adopt a foreign word.. they could barely process the thought of eating snails. Something snappy and English, like a fine pair of plus-four trousers.

His choice was both brilliant and elegant in its simplicity. He settled on “Mayday” - phonetically close to m’aider, from the French venez m’aider, “come help me.” The sound would undoubtedly delight the frogs, as it was after all a provable French derivative, but also be easy for the English xenaphobes, as it was in all aspects, as English as the marvellous first of May. The only caveat was that it needed to be said thrice, just to prevent prevent mistakes and therefore decreed by the air ministry that it would always be spoken three times in succession: “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”

A century later, Mayday x 3 is still the universal distress signal for genuine emergencies, on land sea and by air. It is never spoken lightly, nor in jest. It has even been another great British export, adopted by ships, aircraft, and rescue services worldwide. Its survival is not just practical but symbolic. It demonstrates how language, at its most urgent, crosses borders without needing a passport. In choosing a word that belonged on both sides of the ditch, Mockford created not only a code but a bridge: a reminder that in moments of peril, clarity matters more than difference.

Jolly good show, Frederic Stanley Mockford.