20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

In 1819, Millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner, however it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

History of Collins

CHAPTER 1 A Floating Reef

CHAPTER 2 For and Against

CHAPTER 3 As Monsieur Pleases

CHAPTER 4 Ned Land

CHAPTER 5 At Random

CHAPTER 6 With all Steam on

CHAPTER 7 A Whale of an Unknown Species

CHAPTER 8 Mobilis in Mobile

CHAPTER 9 Ned Land’s Anger

CHAPTER 10 Nemo

CHAPTER 11 The ‘Nautilus’

CHAPTER 12 Everything by Electricity

CHAPTER 13 Figures

CHAPTER 14 The Black River

CHAPTER 15 A Written Invitation

CHAPTER 16 At the Bottom of the Sea

CHAPTER 17 A Submarine Forest

CHAPTER 18 Four Thousand Leagues Under the Pacific

CHAPTER 19 Vanikoro

CHAPTER 20 Torres Straits

CHAPTER 21 Some Days on Land

CHAPTER 22 Captain Nemo’s Thunderbolt

CHAPTER 23 Aegri Somnia

CHAPTER 24 The Coral Kingdom

CHAPTER 25 The Indian Ocean

CHAPTER 26 A Fresh Proposition of Captain Nemo’s

CHAPTER 27 A Pearl Worth Ten Millions

CHAPTER 28 The Red Sea

CHAPTER 29 The Arabian Tunnel

CHAPTER 30 The Grecian Archipelago

CHAPTER 31 The Mediterranean in Forty-Eight Hours

CHAPTER 32 Vigo Bay

CHAPTER 33 A Vanished Continent

CHAPTER 34 Submarine Coalfields

CHAPTER 35 The Sargasso Sea

CHAPTER 36 Cachalots and Whales

CHAPTER 37 The Ice-Bank

CHAPTER 38 The South Pole

CHAPTER 39 Accident or Incident?

CHAPTER 40 Want of Air

CHAPTER 41 From Cape Horn to the Amazon

CHAPTER 42 Poulps

CHAPTER 43 The Gulf Stream

CHAPTER 44 In Latitude 47° 24′ and Longitude 17° 18′

CHAPTER 45 A Hecatomb

CHAPTER 46 Captain Nemo’s Last Words

CHAPTER 47 Conclusion

CLASSIC LITERATURE: WORDS AND PHRASES

About the author

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1 A Floating Reef

In the year 1866 the whole maritime population of Europe and America was excited by a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon. This excitement was not confined to merchants, sailors, sea-captains, shippers, and naval officers of all countries, but the governments of many states on the two continents were deeply interested.

The excitement was caused by an enormous ‘something’ that ships were often meeting. It was a long, spindle-shaped, and sometimes phosphorescent object, much larger and more rapid than a whale.

The different accounts that were written of this object in various log-books agreed generally as to its structure, wonderful speed, and the peculiar life with which it appeared endowed. If it was a cetacean it surpassed in bulk all those that had hitherto been classified; neither Cuvier, Lacepède, M. Dumeril, nor M. de Quatrefages would have admitted the existence of such a monster, unless he had seen it with his own scientific eyes.

By taking the average of observations made at different times – rejecting the timid estimates that assigned to this object a length of 200 feet, as well as the exaggerated opinions which made it out to be a mile in width and three in length – we may fairly affirm that it surpassed all the dimensions allowed by the ichthyologists of the day, if it existed at all. It did exist, that was undeniable, and with that leaning towards the marvellous that characterises humanity, we cannot wonder at the excitement it produced in the entire world.

On the 20th of July, 1866, the steamer Governor Higgenson, of the Calcutta and Burnach Steam Navigation Company, met this moving mass five miles off the east coast of Australia. Captain Baker thought at first that he was in presence of an unknown reef; he was preparing to take its exact position, when two columns of water, projected by the inexplicable object, went hissing up a hundred and fifty feet into the air. Unless there was an intermittent geyser on the reef, the Governor Higgenson had to do with some aquatic mammal, unknown till then, which threw out columns of water mixed with air and vapour from its blowholes.

A similar occurrence happened on the 23rd of July in the same year to the Columbus, of the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company, in the Pacific Ocean. It was, therefore, evident that this extraordinary cetaceous creature could transport itself from one place to another with surprising velocity, seeing there was but an interval of three days between the two observations, separated by a distance of more than 700 nautical leagues.

Fifteen days later, two thousand leagues from the last place it was seen at, the Helvetia, of the Compagnie Nationale, and the Shannon, of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, sailing to windward in that part of the Atlantic between the United States and Europe, each signalled the monster to the other in 42° 15’ N. lat. and 60° 35’ W. long. As the Shannon and the Helvetia were of smaller dimensions than the object, though they measured 300 feet over all, the minimum length of the mammal was estimated at more than 350 feet. Now the largest whales are never more than sixty yards long, if so long.

These accounts arrived one after another; fresh observations made on board the transatlantic ship Le Pereire, the running foul of the monster by the Etna, of the Inman Line; a report drawn up by the officers of the French frigate La Normandie; a very grave statement made by the ship’s officers of the Commodore Fitz James on board the Lord Clyde, deeply stirred public opinion. In light-hearted countries jokes were made on the subject; but in grave and practical countries like England, America, and Germany, much attention was paid to it.

In all the great centres the monster became the fashion; it was sung about in the cafés, scoffed at in the newspapers, and represented at all the theatres. It gave opportunity for hoaxes of every description. In all newspapers short of copy imaginary beings reappeared, from the white whale, the terrible ‘Moby Dick’ of the Northern regions, to the inordinate ‘kraken,’ whose tentacles could fold round a vessel of 500 tons burden and drag it down to the depths of the ocean. The accounts of ancient times were reproduced: the opinions of Aristotle and Pliny, who admitted the existence of these monsters, and the Norwegian tales about Bishop Pontoppidan, those of Paul Heggede, and lastly the report of Mr Harrington, whose good faith could not be put in question when he affirmed that, being on board the Castillian, in 1857, he saw this enormous serpent, which until then had only frequented the seas of the old Constitutionnel newspaper.

Then broke out the interminable polemics of believers and disbelievers in learned societies and scientific journals. The ‘question of the monster’ inflamed all minds. The journalists who professed to be scientific, at strife with those who professed to be witty, poured out streams of ink during this memorable controversy; some even two or three drops of blood, for they wandered from the sea serpent to the most offensive personalities.

During the first months of the year 1867 the question seemed to be buried out of sight and mind, when fresh facts brought it again before the public. It had then changed from a scientific problem to be solved to a real and serious danger to be avoided. The question took another phase. The monster again became an island or rock. On the 5th of March, 1867, the Moravian, of the Montreal Ocean Company, struck her starboard quarter on a rock which no chart gave in that point. She was then going at the rate of thirteen knots under the combined efforts of the wind and her 400 horse-power. Had it not been for the more than ordinary strength of the hull in the Moravian she would have been broken by the shock, and have gone down with 237 passengers.

The accident happened about daybreak. The officers on watch hurried aft, and looked at the sea with the most scrupulous attention. They saw nothing except what looked like a strong eddy, three cables’ length off, as if the waves had been violently agitated. The bearings of the place were taken exactly, and the Moravian went on her way without apparent damage. Had she struck on a submarine rock or some enormous fragment of wreck? They could not find out, but during the examination made of the ship’s bottom when under repair, it was found that part of her keel was broken.

This fact, extremely grave in itself, would perhaps have been forgotten, like so many others, if three weeks afterwards it had not happened again under identical circumstances, only, thanks to the nationality of the ship that was this time victim of the shock, and the reputation of the company to which the vessel belonged, the circumstance was immensely commented upon.

On the 13th of April, 1867, with a smooth sea and favourable breeze, the Cunard steamer Scotia was going at the rate of thirteen knots an hour under the pressure of her 1000 horse-power.

At 4.17 p.m., as the passengers were assembled at dinner in the great saloon, a slight shock was felt on the hull of the Scotia, on her quarter a little aft of the paddle.

The Scotia had not struck anything, but had been struck by some sharp and penetrating rather than blunt surface. The shock was so slight that no one on board would have been uneasy at it had it not been for the carpenter’s watch, who rushed upon deck, calling out – ‘She is sinking! she is sinking!’

Captain Anderson went down immediately into the hold and found that a leak had sprung in the fifth compartment, and the sea was rushing in rapidly. Happily there were no boilers in this compartment, or the fires would have been at once put out. Captain Anderson ordered the engines to be immediately stopped, and one of the sailors dived to ascertain the extent of the damage. Some minutes after it was ascertained that there was a large hole about two yards in diameter in the ship’s bottom. Such a leak could not be stopped, and the Scotia, with her paddles half submerged, was obliged to continue her voyage. She was then 300 miles from Cape Clear, and after three days’ delay, which caused great anxiety in Liverpool, she entered the company’s docks.

The engineers then proceeded to examine her in the dry dock, where she had been placed. They could scarcely believe their eyes; at two yards and a half below water-mark was a regular rent in the shape of an isosceles triangle. The place where the piece had been taken out of the iron plates was so sharply defined that it could not have been done more neatly by a punch. The perforating instrument that had done the work was of no common stamp, for after having been driven with prodigious force, and piercing an iron plate one and three eighths of an inch thick, it had been withdrawn by some wonderful retrograde movement.

Such was the last fact, and it again awakened public opinion on the subject. After that all maritime disasters not satisfactorily accounted for were put down to the account of the monster. All the responsibility of the numerous wrecks annually recorded at Lloyd’s was laid to the charge of this fantastic animal, and thanks to the ‘monster,’ communication between the two continents became more and more difficult; the public loudly demanding that the seas should be rid of the formidable cetacean at any price.

CHAPTER 2 For and Against

At the period when these events were happening I was returning from a scientific expedition into the region of Nebraska. In my quality of Assistant Professor in the Paris Museum of Natural History, the French Government had attached me to that expedition. I arrived at New York, loaded with precious collections made during six months in Nebraska, at the end of March. My departure from France was fixed for the beginning of May. Whilst I waited and was occupying myself with classifying my mineralogical, botanical, and zoological riches, the incident happened to the Scotia.

I was perfectly acquainted with the subject which was the question of the day, and it would have been strange had I not been. I had repeatedly read all the American and European papers without being any the wiser as to the cause. The mystery puzzled me, and I hesitated to form any conclusion.

When I arrived at New York the subject was hot. The hypothesis of a floating island or reef, which was supported by incompetent opinion, was quite abandoned, for unless the shoal had a machine in its stomach, how could it change its position with such marvellous rapidity? For the same reason the idea of a floating hull or gigantic wreck was given up.

There remained, therefore, two possible solutions of the enigma which created two distinct parties; one was that the object was a colossal monster, the other that it was a submarine vessel of enormous motive power. This last hypothesis, which, after all, was admissible, could not stand against inquiries made in the two hemispheres. It was hardly probable that a private individual should possess such a machine. Where and when had he caused it to be built, and how could he have kept its construction secret? Certainly a Government might possess such a destructive engine, and it was possible in these disastrous times, when the power of weapons of war has been multiplied, that, without the knowledge of others, a state might possess so formidable a weapon. After the chassepots came the torpedoes, and after the torpedoes the submarine rams, and after them – the reaction. At least, I hope so.

But the hypothesis of a war machine fell before the declaration of different Governments, and as the public interest suffered from the difficulty of transatlantic communication, their veracity could not be doubted. Besides, secrecy would be even more difficult to a government than to a private individual. After inquiries made in England, France, Russia, Prussia, Spain, Italy, America, and even Turkey, the hypothesis of a submarine monitor was definitely rejected.

On my arrival at New York, several persons did me the honour of consulting me about the phenomenon in question. The Honourable Pierre Aronnax, Professor in the Paris Museum, was asked by the New York Herald to give his opinion on the matter. I subjoin an extract from the article which I published on the 30th of April: –

‘After having examined the different hypothesis one by one, and all other suppositions being rejected, the existence of a marine animal of excessive strength must be admitted.

‘The greatest depths of the ocean are totally unknown to us. What happens there? What beings can live twelve or fifteen miles below the surface of the sea? We can scarcely conjecture what the organisation of these animals is. However, the solution of the problem submitted to me may affect the form of the dilemma, we either know all the varieties of beings that people our planet or we do not. If we do not know them all – if there are still secrets of ichthyology for us – nothing is more reasonable than to admit the existence of fishes or cetaceans of an organisation suitable to the strata inaccessible to soundings, which for some reason or other come up to the surface at intervals.

‘If, on the contrary, we do know all living species, we must, of course, look for the animal in question amongst the already classified marine animals, and in that case I should be disposed to admit the existence of a gigantic narwhal.

‘The common narwhal, or sea-unicorn, is often sixty feet long. This size increased five or tenfold, and a strength in proportion to its size being given to the cetacean, and its offensive arms being increased in the same proportion, you obtain the animal required. It will have the proportions given by the officers of the Shannon, the instrument that perforated the Scotia, and the strength necessary to pierce the hull of the steamer.

‘In fact, the narwhal is armed with a kind of ivory sword or halberd, as some naturalists call it. It is the principal tusk, and is as hard as steel. Some of these tusks have been found imbedded in the bodies of whales, which the narwhal always attacks with success. Others have been with difficulty taken out of ships’ bottoms, which they pierced through and through like a gimlet in a barrel. The Museum of the Paris Faculty of Medicine contains one of these weapons, two and a quarter yards in length and fifteen inches in diameter at the base.

‘Now, suppose this weapon to be ten times stronger, and its possessor ten times more powerful, hurl it at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and you obtain a shock that might produce the catastrophe required. Therefore, until I get fuller information, I shall suppose it to be a sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed, not with a halberd, but with a spur like ironclads or battering rams, the massiveness and motive power of which it would possess at the same time. This inexplicable phenomenon may be thus explained, unless something exists over and above anything ever conjectured, seen, or experienced, which is just possible.’

My article was well received, and provoked much discussion amongst the public. It rallied a certain number of partisans. The solution which it proposed left freedom to the imagination. The human mind likes these grand conceptions of supernatural beings. Now the sea is precisely their best instrument of transmission, the only medium in which these giants, by the side of which terrestrial animals, elephants, or rhinoceri, are but dwarfs, can breed and develop. The liquid masses transport the largest known species of mammalia, and they perhaps contain molluscs of enormous size, crustaceans frightful to contemplate, such as lobsters more than a hundred yards long, or crabs weighing two hundred tons. Why should it not be so? Formerly, terrestrial animals, contemporaries of the geological epochs, quadrupeds, quadrumans, reptiles, and birds, were constructed in gigantic moulds. The Creator had thrown them into a colossal mould which time has gradually lessened. Why should not the sea in its unknown depths have kept there vast specimens of the life of another age – the sea which never changes, whilst the earth changes incessantly? Why should it not hide in its bosom the last varieties of these titanic species, whose years are centuries, and whose centuries are millenniums?

But I am letting myself be carried away by reveries which are no longer such to me. A truce to chimeras which time has changed for me into terrible realities. I repeat, opinion was then made up as to the nature of the phenomenon, and the public admitted without contestation the existence of the prodigious animal which had nothing in common with the fabulous sea serpents.

But if some people saw in this nothing but a purely scientific problem to solve, others more positive, especially in America and England, were of opinion to purge the ocean of this formidable monster, in order to reassure transmarine communications.

Public opinion having declared its verdict, the United States were first in the field, and preparations for an expedition to pursue the narwhal were at once begun in New York. A very fast frigate, the Abraham Lincoln, was put in commission, and the arsenals were opened to Captain Farragut, who actively hastened the arming of his frigate.

But, as generally happens, from the moment it was decided to pursue the monster, the monster was not heard of for two months. It seemed as if this unicorn knew about the plots that were being weaved for it. It had been so much talked of, even through the Atlantic Cable! Would-be wits pretended that the cunning fellow had stopped some telegram in its passage, and was now using the knowledge for his own benefit.

So when the frigate had been prepared for a long campaign, and furnished with formidable fishing apparatus, they did not know where to send her to. Impatience was increasing with the delay, when on July 2 it was reported that a steamer of the San Francisco Line, from California to Shanghai, had met with the animal three weeks before in the North Pacific Ocean.

The emotion caused by the news was extreme, and twenty-four hours only were granted to Captain Farragut before he sailed. The ship was already victualled and well stocked with coal. The crew were there to a man, and there was nothing to do but to light the fires.

Three hours before the Abraham Lincoln left Brooklyn Pier I received the following letter: –

‘Sir, – If you would like to join the expedition of the Abraham Lincoln, the United States Government will have great pleasure in seeing France represented by you in the enterprise. Captain Farragut has a cabin at your disposition.