by Jules Verne
6 A possible influence on 20T was the catalogue of the exhibition of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle of Le Havre, published as Les Merveilles de l’aquarium de l’exposition du Havre (1868); Verne probably visited the exhibition in June 1868.
Explanatory Notes
5 Cuvier . . . Quatrefages: naturalists, specializing in ichthyology, amongst Verne’s sources, often via intermediaries. Cuvier: Georges (1769–1832), a founder of comparative anatomy and palaeontology, and the creationist author of De l’histoire naturelle des cétacés (1804) and Histoire naturelle des poissons (1828–48), from which more than a third of Verne’s fish names are drawn, but with the adjectives added. Lacépède: Bernard-Germain de (1756–1825), a disciple of Buffon, author of Histoire naturelle des poissons (1793–1803) and Histoire des cétacés (1804). Duméril: Henri-André (1812–70), doctor and author, or perhaps his father André-Marie-Constant (1774–1860), specialists in reptiles. Quatrefages: Jean-Louis-Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau (1810–92), naturalist and anthropologist, author of Histoire de l’homme (1867). He appears in the prehistoric section added to the 1867 edition of Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Quatrefages sent Verne a signed copy of this work (‘Remembrance of the author’); who wrote back on 6 February 1868 to announce the underwater novel for that September.
6 the Calcutta and Burmah Steam Navigation Company . . . five miles east of the Australian coastline: (Verne: ‘the Calcutta and Burnach’—this shorthand is adopted for quotations across most or all of the original editions, although it was sometimes Hetzel who introduced the errors), founded in 1856, it became the British India Steam Navigation Company in 1869. MS2 has a more logical ‘500 miles’. The ships mentioned in this chapter are authentic, unlike the encounters.
two columns of water: MS2 has the water rising only ‘50 feet’ into the air; at the time whales were believed to have two nostrils.
the ‘Cristóbal Colon’ of the West India and Pacific Steamship Company: (1854), 1,100 tons (Flachat, p. 174—for further information about this author, see Appendix 2: Sources). This company was founded in 1838; ‘West India’ was part of the Caribbean.
the Helvetia of the French Line and the Shannon of the Royal Mail: the French Line (1861), or Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. However, a Helvetia (1864), of 3,319 tons and 350 horsepower (HP), belonged to the British National Steam Navigation Company (1863); the Shannon (1859), an iron paddleboat of 900 HP (Flachat, pp. 86 and 88); the Royal Mail (1840), or British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, or Cunard Line.
the culammak and the umgullick: (1871 edition: ‘Kulammak’ here, and, later: ‘Hullamock . . . Umgallick’ (I 12); MS2 here: ‘Hullamack’). Although this information about the two species of whales appears in Arthur Mangin, Les Mystères de l’océan (1863, 1864—p. 330), Mangin seems to have borrowed it from the Dictionnaire illustré (see Appendix 2: Sources), which in turn cites the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811).
6 the Pereire . . . the Lord Clyde: (Verne: ‘Iseman’; Magasin d’éducation et de récréation (henceforth: MÉR): ‘Inman’), the Pereire, 800 HP, propeller-driven; the Etna: 2,120 tons, 450 HP; the Inman line, or Liverpool and Philadelphia Steamship Company (1850), founded by William Inman (1825–81). Verne saw the 1,000-HP Lord Clyde, subject to rolling, on 20 or 21 March 1867, apparently at Birkenhead.
7 the white whale, that awe-inspiring ‘Moby Dick’ . . . to the enormous kraken: (MÉR: ‘Maby Dick’; MS2: ‘Maoby Dick’), probable allusion to Moby-Dick; or, the Whale (1850), by Herman Melville (1819–91). A possible source reads: ‘Maby Dick’ (Mangin, p. 297). Verne’s The Yarns of Jean-Marie Cabidoulin (1901) echoes Mangin: ‘the great white whale of the Greenland coast, the famous Moby Dick, which the Scottish whalers hunted for more than two centuries, without managing to reach it, for the good reason that they had never seen it’ (ch. 4). But before Mangin and Melville, there was Mocha Dick—whose name fitted his appearance—living in the South Pacific at the turn of the century. The water column of this white whale was exceptionally continuous and perpendicular. The animal swam in convoy with ships, but like the Nautilus, Nemo and Ahab, turned ferocious if attacked. Mocha Dick influenced Poe’s The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838, French translation by Baudelaire, 1858), which in turn inspired not only Moby-Dick but also 20T. kraken: sea monsters that lived off the coast of Norway and crushed ships with their tentacles, possibly based on giant squid (which can grow up to 50 feet and weigh 2 tons). Cabidoulin prominently features kraken (with some of its monsters curiously resembling . . . the Nautilus).
Aristotle . . . Egede: published works on sea monsters. Aristotle: (384–322 bc), philosopher and author of ‘Auscultationes mirabiles’, about Atlantis, and a History of Animals containing a biological classification which includes cephalopods and squid. Pliny: the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus (23–79); author of a Natural History, including whales covering four acres and a 700-pound ‘polyp’ which climbed over a fence in Spain. Bishop Pontoppidan: Erik Pontoppidan (1698–1764), bishop of Bergen, theologian, and author of a Natural History of Norway (1752). He describes a monster ‘a mile and a half in circumference . . . like a number of small islands’, with arms reaching out of the sea, a strong smell, and a discharge of muddy fluid. Paul Egede: (Verne: ‘Heggede’) (1708–89), Danish-Norwegian missionary and specialist in Greenlandic, author of Eftererretninger Om Grønland (1789), which describes a monster ‘as tall as a mainmast . . . [with] a long pointed snout . . . great broad paws’.
Harrington . . . the old Constitutionnel: what George Henry Harrington and 20 others sighted about 10 miles from St Helena on 12 or 13 December 1857, a 200-foot serpent-like creature with a wrinkled crest, was recorded in a formal report to the Admiralty; the ‘Castilian’: (Verne: ‘Castillan’), about 1,100 tons, described in Cabidoulin (ch. 4); the old ‘Constitutionnel’: a liberal newspaper (1815–1914) which serialized George Sand, Eugène Sue, and Dumas père, and was suppressed and revived five times. Verne is ‘de-metaphorizing’ the cliché for any dubious story, ‘the sea serpent of the Constitutionnel’.
the Geographical Institute of Brazil . . . Petermanns Mitteilungen: the Geographical and Historical Institute (1838). The Berlin Royal Academy of Sciences: founded in 1700; the British Association: for the Progress of Science (1831); the Smithsonian Institution: centre for scientific research (1846), financed by the bequest of James Smithson (1765–1829); the Indian Archipelago: Journal of the Indian Archipelago [East Indies, modern Indonesia] and Eastern Asia (1847–63). Abbé Moigno’s ‘Cosmos’: François-Napoléon Moigno (1804–84), mathematician and former Jesuit, who edited Le Cosmos from 1852 to 1862, when it was renamed Les Mondes; Petermanns Mitteilungen: (Verne: ‘Petermann’s Mittheilungen’) or Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen (1860–1915), founded by the cartographer and geographer, August Petermann (1822–78).
punning on a saying of Linnaeus’s . . . ‘nature does not proceed by the lips of bounders’: Carolus Linnaeus (1707–78), Swedish botanist who devised the binomial method of animal and plant classification based on evolutionary relationships, and who believed in kraken; ‘nature does not proceed by the lips of bounders’: ‘la nature ne fait pas de sots’, a pun on ‘la nature ne fait pas de sauts’ (‘Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds’—Linnaeus’s Philosophia Botanica (1751), sec. 77), an expression that has become proverbial since Aristotle and is visible in the alchemists, Leibniz’s New Essays on Human Understanding (1765, IV, 16), Mangin, Frédol, and Figuier. It was often quoted by Darwin to support his evolutionary thesis.
a much-feared satirical newspaper . . . like Hippolytus: MS2: ‘an article in the Figaro’, showing that Verne’s acerbic comments are directed at the French press. The Figaro is a conservative newspaper (1826–present); the author in question may be the acerbic journalist, Henri Rochefort (1831–1913); like Hippolytus: Hippolytus was the son of Theseus in Greek mythology. Theseus calls on Poseidon, the god of the sea, who sends a sea monster to frighten Hippolytus’s
horses, causing him to be dragged to his death. Racine writes: ‘Hippolytus . . . lunges at the monster, and with a spear . . . makes a large wound in his side’ (Phèdre, Act V, scene 6). Verne’s mixed metaphor ingeniously reverses the monster and Hippolytus’s roles; but it is also an allusion to Hippolyte de Villemessant (1810–79), editor-in-chief of the Figaro from 1854. His message is that the journalist is being too bold.
8 the Moravian of the Montreal Ocean Company was sailing at 27° 30´ N, 72° 15´ W: the Moravian (1864), 2,246 tons, 400 HP; the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company: founded in 1854. MS2 has ‘the Lafayette of the French Line, responsible for the postal service between Saint-Nazaire and Veracruz’, and adds, ‘Its laden displacement was 5,800 tons’. It was forgotten to change the coordinates: a ship coming from Canada would not sail at 27° 30´ N.
8 dry dock: MS2 adds ‘of Saint-Nazaire’. The deletion of the French references is due to Hetzel’s sensitivity about anything that might be deemed remotely controversial.
Cunard: Sir Samuel (1787–1865), Canadian founder of the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (1840), officially renamed the Cunard Line in 1878.
In 1853 . . . the Great Eastern: in fact the date only applies to the first ship; the ‘Arabia’: Cunard’s last wooden paddleship (1853); the ‘Persia’: one of his first iron ships (1856); the ‘China’: (which Phileas Fogg narrowly misses in New York), launched in 1862; the ‘Scotia’: (1861), his last paddleship, which held the transatlantic record until 1869, at 8 days 22 hours; the ‘Java’: built in 1865; the ‘Russia’: (MS2: ‘the Prussia’), built in 1867; the ‘Great Eastern’: Verne saw Brunel’s ship (then called the Leviathan) under construction in Greenwich in September 1859. By far the largest ship in the world, it was equipped with a single screw propeller, paddlewheels, and a full set of sails. In 1867 it was chartered to carry passengers to the Paris Universal Exposition; Verne was on board for both legs of the voyage (14 March–30 April 1867), describing it in a letter to Hetzel ([9 April 1867]—references in this abbreviated form indicate the letters of Verne and Hetzel, square brackets meaning interpolated dates) as ‘an eighth wonder of the world’, and, at great length, in the semi-fictional A Floating City (1871), whose title refers to the ship. Verne’s unpublished manuscript, ‘Carnet de voyage en Amérique’, notes every detail of the voyage. In addition, in 1867 Verne wrote an untitled two-page fragment of a novel or short story, which begins ‘A Briton of great distinction . . .’. It contains the names of most of Cunard’s ships mentioned in 20T, together with similar remarks about their regularity and punctuality, derived from Flachat (pp. 90 and 117).
9 Captain Anderson: this dynamic fictional figure is presumably based on the forceful real-life Captain Anderson of the Great Eastern described in Part Two (ch. 20).
300 miles off Cape Clear: this position does not correspond to the coordinates above.
10 an isosceles triangle: this hole is very strange, since not motivated; Nemo’s only depicted attack, much later in the novel, is launched horizontally towards a much lower point on the vessel. The ram, located half-way up the Nautilus, cannot climb to a depth of less than four metres—unless launched obliquely. Is it merely a coincidence that the hole proposed by Hetzel in the fabric of the balloon in The Mysterious Island is also triangular? (The idea is rejected by Verne, who emphasizes its uselessness and implausibility (for details, see my Jules Verne inédit, ch. 14).)
Bureau Veritas: 1828–present, rival to the International Lloyd’s Register.
part-time lecturer: Aronnax is an occasional teacher (‘professeur suppléant’), and not a professor, as has been the usual translation to date.
11 doubting Thomases . . . in the Scotia’s side: reference to ‘Except I . . . put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into [the resurrected Jesus’s] side, I will not believe’ ( John 20: 25).
‘submarine’ vessel: (‘bateau “sous-marin” ’), the first use of ‘submarine’ as a noun meaning ‘vessel’ was about in the 1890s in both French and English.
chassepot rifles . . . underwater rams: contemporary armaments: breech-loading rifles, improved by gunsmith Antoine Chassepot (1833–1905), used in the French armed forces from 1866. In a letter of ‘Monday, 30 [December 1867]’, highly critical of Napoleon III and the Empire, Verne writes: ‘. . . chassepots the only reasoning, a war in perspective . . . for 1848! [sic]’; Verne’s ‘floating mines’ (‘torpilles’) may mean stationary ones, not ‘torpedoes’ in the modern sense; the term ‘underwater rams’ was first used about the Merrimack (cf. following note); Verne’s ‘béliers sous-marins’ is unattested: it denotes male sheep!
12 Monitor: the Monitor (1861–2) and the Virginia (ex-Merrimack, 1855–62) fought the first battle between ironclads, in the American Civil War. The Monitor’s turret allowed its cannon to fire in different directions. In general, a ‘monitor’ was a heavily armoured warship with a flat deck and watertight hatches, operating nearly submerged. On 20 or 21 March 1867, Verne saw an ‘ironclad’ at Laird’s of Birkenhead, the company that made the metal plates for the Nautilus (I 13).
New York Herald . . . the honourable Pierre Aronnax: the New York Herald (1835), perhaps the best-selling newspaper worldwide, was run in 1868 by James Gordon Bennett Jr; in 1866 it had sent Stanley in search of Livingstone. The epithet ‘honourable’ is normally reserved for elected officials or government delegates; Pierre was the name of Jules Verne’s father. ‘Aronnax’ was not attested before 1869: the hard ‘ax’ is also visible in ‘Axel’, the hero of Journey to the Centre of the Earth. The illustration of Aronnax in the French edition, with arms folded, was based on a photograph of Verne himself. In MS1 his name is ‘Oyonnax’; and in MS2, it is written ‘Arronax’ or ‘Arronnax’, except on the first occurrence—‘Aronnax’—which may have caused this unconventional form to be retained. Oyonnax is a village in the Ain, near Lyon, cited for its peat in Verne’s Geography of France.
12 or 15 miles below the surface: in I 20 the maximum depth is implied to be about 15 or 16 kilometres.
13 a Giant Narwhal: Verne constructs his mystery by mixing legend (the unicorn’s horn, often brought back to Europe, was the narwhal’s) and exaggeration (the maximum size of the narwhal, which lives only near the Arctic, is about 16 feet).
14 that sea which never changes, unlike the terrestrial core which is almost continually being modified: Verne delights in inverting opposites, in describing the sea in terrestrial terms and vice versa.
14 The Shipping & Mercantile Gazette and Lloyd’s List, the Paquebot, and the Revue maritime et coloniale: (Verne: ‘Shipping and Mercantile Gazette and Lloyd’s’), respectively: 1836–1916; ‘Journal of Navigation and Sea Voyages’, 1866–July 1869; and an official publication, 1861–present.
Captain Farragut: the name must come from David G. Farragut (1801–70), the forceful Unionist admiral who said ‘Damn the torpedoes—full speed ahead!’ (1864); he visited France in 1867.
15 on 3 July, it was learned that a steamer of the San Francisco–Shanghai line: this date in 1867 marks the beginning of the main chronology, which will continue until a date fifteen or twenty days after 2 June 1868 (II 21). The novel opened with the encounters with the mysterious object, on 20 and 23 July 1866, followed by the debate lasting six months, then new encounters on 5 March and 13 April 1867. MS2 and the 18mo edition of 1900 (henceforth: ‘1900’) have the date as ‘2 July’. The MÉR edition and 1900, but not MS2, have ‘the Tampico, a steamer’: in From the Earth to the Moon, the Tampico is an ‘aviso of the Federal Navy’ (ch. 13).
Fifth Avenue Hotel: Verne stayed there on 9–10 and 15–16 April 1867 (A Floating City, ch. 34 and 39). Other American autobiographical details shared with 20T include the Great Eastern, the hotel lift, the 20-franc cab ride to the ‘pier’ (in English), the Hudson, the East River, Broadway, Brooklyn, Sandy Hook, Napoleon, Agassiz, and George Sand.
J. B. Hobson: a J. B. Hobson occurs in the records of the American Bible Society in 186
0–1 and Yale University in 1865. In 1867 the Navy Secretary was Gideon Welles.
the Northwest Passage: linking the Atlantic to the Pacific, discovered in the 1840s, navigated at the end of the century.
16 Conseil: this surname may be taken from Jacques-François Conseil (born in 1814), who tested a three-ton ellipsoid submarine at Le Tréport and on the Seine in Paris in 1858–9. It had a hatch, a viewing chamber, automatic aeration valves, a screw, and diving fins, as recorded in his pamphlet entitled Bateau de sauvetage, dit ‘Pilote’ (1863).
17 archaeotheria . . . chaeropotami: extinct mammals. Archaeotheria: (Verne: ‘les archiotherium’) huge warthog-like animals (N. America); hyracotheria: or Eohippi: genus of very small horse, found in Wyoming and Utah; oreodons: genus intermediate between pig, deer, and camel that lived near the Rockies; chaeropotami: genus close to hyracotherium.
monsieur’s live babirusa: why is Aronnax travelling with a wild pig found only in the East Indies? (The word ‘live’ is omitted in some editions.)
18 The hotel lift: the lift in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, installed in 1859, was innovative, being raised and lowered by a vertical screw.
19 ‘Go ’head!’: naval form of the command (some Hetzel editions ‘correct’ it to ‘Go ahead!’).
the 39 stars: the American flag had 37 stars in 1867, reaching 39 only in 1889.
20 Leviathan: a monstrous sea creature in the Old Testament, later identified with the whale, described as ‘piercing’, ‘crooked’, and a ‘sea-dragon’ (Isaiah 27: 1; cf. Job 41: 1 and Psalms 104: 26).
Knight of Rhodes: a member of a military religious order, expelled from the Holy Land in about 1291, which settled in Rhodes in 1309 or 1310, then in Malta in 1530.
