by Jules Verne
Hôtel du Sommerard: a museum in the Latin Quarter, devoted mainly to medieval France; now known as the Cluny Museum.
85 Ehrenberg: (Verne: ‘Erhemberg’), Christian Gottfried (1795–1876), naturalist specializing in coral, author of a study of marine phosphorescence (Memoirs of the Berlin Academy, 1835).
86 ‘vertebrates . . . designed for life underwater’: text taken from the Dictionnaire français illustré et encyclopédie universelle (Bureau de la publication and Lévy, 1847–63), Dupiney de Vorepierre and Jean-François-Marie de Marcoux, eds, vol. 2, p. 760, entry on ‘Fish’.
91 ‘Nautron respoc lorni virch’: (MS1: ‘. . . restoll loni . . .’), ‘Nautron’ contains the root naut-; ‘respoc’ is an anagram of ‘Crespo’ (see following note); and ‘virch’ contains the root ‘vir’ (homme). Aronnax later deduces that the phrase means ‘We have nothing in sight’, but it is not clear which words mean what.
92 a tiny island . . . called Roca de la Plata, meaning ‘Silver Rock’: (Verne: ‘Rocca . . .’); Francisco Sanchez Crespo was captain of the galleon, El Rey Carlos. Roca de la Plata, or Crespo Island, ‘is only a rock lost in the ocean, and one of the most isolated of all this Micronesia’ (MS1). The feature that Crespo claimed to have discovered on 15 October 1801 was deleted from most maps from the 1870s.
94 Rouquayrol–Denayrouze apparatus: mining engineer Benoît Rouquayrol (1826–75) and naval lieutenant Auguste Denayrouze (1838–83), the author of Manuel du matelot plongeur, et instructions sur l’appareil plongeur Rouquayrol-Denayrouze (1867). The most sophisticated version allowed an hour’s diving at 10 metres, or half an hour at 40 metres: much less than Nemo’s version. Rouquayrol invented an ‘aerophore’ for rescuing miners (1860), then a breathing system that automatically regulated the pressure as different depths were reached. In collaboration with Denayrouze, he created an air tank placed on the diver’s back. It was replenished via a tube from the surface, which it could dispense with for limited periods. Such a device, meaning a flexible suit was no longer needed, was used for collecting sponges in the Mediterranean. Verne’s contribution is to increase the pressure of the tank and to add a ‘copper sphere’, to allow deeper dives. However, the pressure in such a combination would reach thirty bars and force the blood to the head, with fatal results, unless the suit was absolutely waterproof. Since Aronnax takes a nap in it later on (I 17), the ‘two tubes’ must connect to the sphere rather than directly to the mouth.
95 Ruhmkorff device: Journey to the Centre of the Earth: ‘The Ruhmkorff apparatus consists of a Bunsen battery . . . an induction coil . . . and a glass coil under vacuum . . . producing a continuous white light.’
Fulton . . . Landi: inventors of naval armaments. Fulton: Robert (1765–1815), American inventor and engineer. He designed the first commercially successful steamboat (1807); and built two different submarines called Nautilus, designed to launch explosives against British ships. He successfully demonstrated his three-man 21-foot candle-lit craft on the Seine in Paris in 1800–1. The Nautilus had a spindle shape, a folding sail, a ballast pump, a conning tower with glass ports, rudders and diving planes for vertical and horizontal control, oxygen from compressed air, a hand-powered propeller, and a torpedo charge on a trailing rope. It was tested by the French Navy at Brest in 1800 or 1801, but the results were mixed. Britons Phipps Coles and Burley: (Verne: ‘Philippe Coles’), Captain Cowper Phipps Coles (1819–70), inventor of a rotating turret and author of Letters from Captain C. Coles to the Secretary of the Admiralty on Sea-Going Turret Ships [1865?]; Bennett (Graham) Burley (1840–1914), later Burleigh, Confederate naval officer, inventor with his father of an underwater battery and a mine that had to be screwed to the vessel, and author of a pamphlet, Lettres patentes pour des perfectionnements relatifs à l’usage des canons sous-marins (1862). Furcy: mechanic from Paris, who exhibited an underwater gun at the 1867 Exhibition, not entirely waterproof however. Landi: Tommaso or Thomas (dates unknown), living in Paris, author of a London patent, Nouveau procédé pour l’immersion du câble télégraphique sous-marin (1858), and of a pamphlet, Les Nouvelles Bombes: Bombe à percussion interne et bombe de second éclat (1860).
96 small glass capsules, invented by the Austrian chemist Leinebrock: (Verne: ‘Leniebroek’), the form ‘Leinebrock’, present in the first manuscript, and more in line with German usage, is adopted in this edition. However neither spelling is attested.
miniature Leyden jars: Verne seems to be confusing balls that carry an electric charge with balls projected by electric means, the only sort attested. A possible source is: ‘An Austrian chemist has reportedly discovered an electric bullet that explodes like lightning when it has penetrated the body’ (Les Mondes, vol. 12, 1866, p. 228). The first manuscript clarifies the nature of Verne’s electric bullets: ‘ “Glass capsules?” | “In which this chemist found a method of storing powerful electric sparks; these capsules are covered with a steel framework which allows them to enter flesh, and they explode at the slightest shock” ’ (21). Electrically-projected balls or bullets seem to have been invented in 1746 by Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692–1761), a physicist from Leyden, author of Elements of Physics (1726) and co-inventor of the Leyden jar, whose name ends like ‘Leniebroek’ . . . Leyden jars: electrical condensers with a glass jar as a dielectric between sheets of tin foil (1745–6).
97 about twenty electric bullets: two pages earlier, Nemo had said ‘a fully loaded gun can contain up to ten’ electric bullets.
103 witty naturalist: Frédol (p. 48).
105 its species will probably soon become extinct: sea otters were indeed almost hunted to extinction, but are now protected. Verne’s own opposition to hunting is clearly stated on numerous occasions, so it is possible that Nemo’s behaviour (plus his companion’s a page later, and even the unjustified over-fishing in I 18) is being criticized, if not by Aronnax, at least by the author.
107 Monstrous fireflies: ‘fiery mouths’ (‘bouches à feu’) in some modern editions must be an error for ‘fireflies’ (‘mouches à feu’). Richard Ellis says that such sharks do not have a ‘phosphorescent substance’, but in fact at least one species of dogfish shark is luminescent. (His Monsters of the Deep (New York: Knopf, 1994) harshly criticizes Verne for scientific ‘errors’, but itself contains a number of mistakes.)
108 I recognized what were clearly Irish, French, a few Slavs, a Greek, and a Cretan: Aronnax has an amazing, almost racist, ability to discern the different nationalities; but the men’s appearance is the only way their varied origins and hence the scale of Nemo’s social experiment can be indicated—at the same time as muddying the question of his nationality.
109 caloric: an indestructible, all-pervading, undetectable fluid, formerly believed to be responsible for the transfer of heat.
You will see the consequences of this phenomenon at the Poles: Aronnax will see only one Pole (II 13).
4½ million cubic leagues . . . a layer more than 10 metres thick: the first figure is much too large, the second much too small.
110 15,149 metres: the great depths quoted in 20T are based on faulty sounding techniques, with some more than double the real figure. The deepest point is now calculated to be about 10,900 metres.
111 Captain Cook: James (1728–79), navigator. He explored the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, and is credited with preventing scurvy through proper diet.
5,000 metres above sea level: in fact 4,205 metres.
112 Agora . . . Galen: in Greece, the Ancient Agora, an open space located at the foot of the Acropolis, served as a market and meeting place. Athenaeus: Verne seems to be confusing Athenaeus, a Greek physician (late 1st century), and Athenaeus of Naucratis, a Greek historian and grammarian (c.170–c.230), author of Banquet of Scholars, who describes the beauty of argonauts on Roman tables. Galen: probably Claudius Galen (ad 130?–200), Greek physician and anatomist (218–68), but perhaps Gallien, or Gallienus, Roman emperor (253–68).
d’Orbigny: Alcide-Charles-Victor-Dessalines (1802
–57), creationist geologist who published Monographie des céphalopodes acétabulifères (1834) and Paléontologie française (1840–54), ordering rock strata by their fossil content and thus equating the past with its visible stages, the metaphor that generates Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
113 Jean Macé: (1815–94), publicist and author of Les Serviteurs de l’estomac (1864). He founded the Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation with Hetzel in 1864 (Verne was also a director from 1866); its inaugural issue started the serialization of Captain Hatteras. In Paris in the Twentieth Century, Verne calls him ‘the most ingenious of scientific popularizers’.
steering the wrecked three-master through the ocean depths: it is not clear if this is a merchant ship or a warship; and no cause of the shipwreck is proposed. It is true that the very presence of the Nautilus, ‘at most . . . a few hours’ afterwards, could be indicative of Nemo’s involvement, especially given the ‘series of maritime disasters that the Nautilus was to encounter on its route’ (I 19). However, the first manuscript says the wreck is ‘not more than a few days old’, meaning that the Nautilus may not have sunk it.
114 ‘the Florida, Sunderland’: a merchant ship named Luida Florida, from Sunderland, is listed in The Mercantile Navy List of 1860; the famous Secessionist Florida which sank about thirty-seven ships during the Civil War (1861–5) was at the centre of the Alabama Affair.
on 11 December: it was already 11 December at the end of the previous chapter. Has Verne forgotten; or is he marking the wreck of the Florida as at Tuamotu, in the centre of the huge area of the Pacific owned by the French and an unlikely place to meet a British ship?
Bougainville’s: Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811), explorer, naturalist, and geographer. He fought in the American War of Independence, rediscovered the Solomon Islands, and wrote a Voyage around the World (1771–2).
Captain Bellingshausen of the Mirny: (Verne: ‘Captain Bell of the Minerve’) Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (1778–1852), admiral and explorer. He skirted round Antarctica, discovering Peter I and Alexander I Islands. He is mentioned again (as ‘Bellinghausen’) in the Antarctic episode.
115 Mr Darwin: Charles Robert (1809–82), naturalist. From findings accumulated on a circumnavigation on the Beagle (1831–6), he formulated the modern concept of evolution, in On the Origin of Species (1859, French translation, 1862) and The Descent of Man (1871). Verne’s mention of him here is the first. Although on this occasion approval is given to Darwin’s writings on coral reefs or the ocean depths, on evolution itself Verne remained largely silent or actively disapproving.
A hundred and ninety-two thousand years: the figures quoted in fact give about 10 million years.
116 Tonga . . . killed: historical events in the South Pacific. the final resting-place for the crews of the ‘Argo’, the ‘Port-au-Prince’, and the ‘Duke of Portland’: the Argo was an Australian brig wrecked on Argo Reef, south-east Fiji, in January 1800; the Port-au-Prince was a Liverpool privateer, seized on 23 November 1806 by natives of the Levuka Islands; and the Duke of Portland was an American ship seized at Tongataboo in Tonga in June 1802: in each case the majority of the crew were killed. Captain de Langle, La Pérouse’s friend: Paul de Langle (1744–87), captain of the Astrolabe and La Pérouse’s first officer, killed on 11 December 1787 on Tutuila in the Samoan group. Jean-François de Galaup de La Pérouse (1741–88) was an explorer who died on Vanikoro in 1788.
Tasman . . . Torricelli: Abel Janszoon (1603–59), Dutch navigator and explorer, discovered Tasmania and New Zealand and proved that Australia was an island. Torricelli: Evangelista (1608–47), mathematician and physicist, disciple of Galileo.
Cook in 1774, d’Entrecasteaux in 1793, and finally Dumont d’Urville: (Verne: ‘1714’), Antoine-Raymond-Joseph de Bruni d’Entrecasteaux (1737–93), officer and explorer of Australia. The explorer Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville (1790–1842) studied terrestrial magnetism, charted the South Atlantic and South Pacific, and discovered Adélie and Clarie Coasts.
116 Captain Dillon, the first man to throw light on the mystery of La Pérouse’s shipwreck: Peter Dillon (1788–1847), Irish captain and author of Narrative . . . of a voyage in the South Seas . . . to ascertain the actual fate of La Pérouse (1829, French translation, 1830).
117 Seneca’s precept: Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Younger (c.4 bc–ad 65), stoic philosopher, writer, and politician. The precept is found in his Letters to Lucilius (letter 78, section 23).
Quiros: Admiral Pedro-Fernandez de (1565–1614), Portuguese navigator.
Vanikoro: or Vanikolo, in the Santa Cruz Islands, south-east Solomon Islands.
118 the Recherche and the Espérance: the Recherche was a twenty-gun frigate (1787–94) of the Marsouin class; the Espérance, a frigate (1781–94) of the Rhône class.
Bowen . . . New Georgia Island: George Bowen declared that he had seen remains from La Pérouse’s ship, in December 1791; New Georgia is in the Solomon Islands.
a report by Captain Hunter: John Hunter (1738–1821), later governor of New South Wales. He explored the Furneaux Islands and Bass Strait, showed that Tasmania was an island, and wrote An Historical Journal . . . of the New Discoveries in the South Seas (1793).
119 Tikopia in Vanuatu: in fact part of the Solomon Islands (Verne: ‘1824’; 1871: ‘Tikipia’).
Dumont d’Urville and his Astrolabe: not to be confused with La Pérouse’s Astrolabe, the ship after which La Coquille (1811–51) was renamed so as to search for its remains.
120 M. Jacquinot: Charles-Hector (1796–1879), admiral; he edited Dumont d’Urville’s Voyage au Pôle sud et dans l’Océanie . . . (1842–54).
The Bayonnaise, commanded by Le Goarant de Tromelin: Louis-François-Marie-Nicolas Le Goarant de Tromelin (1786–1867), later rear-admiral. The Bayonnaise was a corvette sent in fact to report on the political situation in Hawaii, and thence, via Tikopia and Vanikoro (17 June 1828), back to France.
121 The Astrolabe . . . Satisfaction: in this paragraph Verne is weaving fact and fiction, with the story up to and including the departure (‘northwards’) in the cannibalized ship being what Dillon learned from the islanders. The wreck of the Boussole was located in 1964, 500 metres north-west of the Astrolabe. The rest still remains an unsolved mystery; Verne’s tin box and location are apparently invented—or borrowed from a different narrative.
122 La Pérouse Island: Verne has ‘le groupe de La Pérouse’, but modern texts refer to La Pérouse Island, Vanikoro.
123 the dangerous reef: this is the Great Barrier Reef, a very rare term in 1868, more specifically Tribulation Cape, off the Bay of Trinity; in fact only the Endeavour touched it, during the night of 10–11 June.
124 Francisco Serrao . . . Dumont d’Urville in 1827: all the travellers quoted by Verne are indeed reported, with various degrees of reliability, to have visited New Guinea; Francisco Serrao in 1511: (Verne: ‘Serrano’), despatched by Albuquerque from Malacca to the Moluccas; don Jorge de Meneses in 1526: (Verne: ‘don José de Meneses’), appointed captain-designate of the Moluccas, but was blown off course en route: it is not certain that he found New Guinea; Grijalva in 1527: Juan de (1489?–1527), Spanish navigator and explorer of Mexico; the Spanish general Alvar de Saavedra in 1528: (d. 1529), relative and friend of Cortez, who sent him to the South Seas in 1527; it is in fact conjectural which landmass he sighted; Iñigo Ortiz de Retes in 1545: (Verne: ‘Juigo Ortez’), despatched from the Moluccas; the Dutchman Schouten in 1616: (Verne: ‘Shouten’), Willem (1567?–1625), mariner, discovered the Admiralty Islands, and was the first to sail round Cape Horn, named after his birthplace Hoorn; Nicholas Struyck in 1753: (Verne: ‘Nicolas Sruick’) (1687–1769), author of geographical works; Dampier: William (1652–1715), British buccaneer and explorer who reported sea serpents. He sailed round the world three times, and was on the two privateering expeditions when Alexander Selkirk, the model for Robinson Crusoe, was marooned on Juan Fernandez and then rescued; Funnell: (Verne: ‘Fumel’), William
(dates unknown), mate who served with Dampier on the St George, author of A Voyage Round the World (1707); Carteret: Philip (d. 1796), British rear-admiral, explorer, and map-maker, sailed around the world (1766–9); Edwards: Captain Edwards of the Pandora, despatched to the Pacific to apprehend the Bounty mutineers; Forrest: Thomas (1729?–1802?), captain and author of A Voyage to New Guinea, Moluccas (1774–6), and A Treatise on the Monsoons in the East Indies (1782); McCluer . . . in 1792: (Verne: ‘Mac Cluer’), John (d. 1794?), British explorer and surveyor; Duperrey in 1823: Louis-Isidore (1786–1865), navigator, geographer, and author of Voyage autour du monde . . . dans la corvette . . . ‘La Coquille’ (1826), (the same ship, re-baptized the Astrolabe, took part in La Pérouse’s ill-fated expedition).
the dark-skinned peoples [Noirs] . . . the redoubtable Andamanese: Grégoire-Louis Domeny de Rienzi (1789–1843), navigator and racist author of Dictionnaire usuel et scientifique de géographie (1841) and Océanie, ou cinquième partie du monde (1836–8). The ‘M.’ is unusual for past authors. While at the time ‘Malaysia’ included much of south-east Asia, including a section of the Torres Strait, it did not extend to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
