In Search of the Castaways

The three books gathered under the title “In Search of the Castaways” occupied much of Verne’s attention during the three years following 1865. The characters used in these books were afterwards reintroduced in “The Mysterious Island,” which was in its turn a sequel to “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” Thus this entire set of books form a united series upon which Verne worked intermittently during ten years.

“In Search of the Castaways,” which has also been published as “The Children of Captain Grant” and as “A Voyage Around the World,” is perhaps most interesting in connection with the last of these titles. It is our author’s first distinctly geographical romance. By an ingenious device he sets before the rescuers a search which compels their circumnavigation of the globe around a certain parallel of the southern hemisphere. Thus they cross in turn through South America, Australia and New Zealand, besides visiting minor islands.

The three great regions form the sub-titles of the three books which compose the story. In each region the rescuers meet with adventures characteristic of the land. They encounter Indians in America; bushrangers in Australia; and Maoris in New Zealand. The passage of the searching party gives ground,—one is almost tempted to say, excuse,—for a close and careful description of each country and of its inhabitants, step by step. Even the lesser incidents of the story are employed to emphasise the distinctive features of each land. The explorers are almost frozen on the heights of the Andes, and almost drowned in the floods of the Patagonian Pampas. An avalanche sweeps some of them away; a condor carries off a lad. In Australia they are stopped by jungles and by quagmires; they hunt kangaroos. In New Zealand they take refuge amid hot sulphur springs and in a house “tabooed”; they escape by starting a volcano into eruption.

Here then are fancy and extravagance mixed with truth and information. Verne has done a vast and useful work in stimulating the interest not only of Frenchmen but of all civilised nations, with regard to the lesser known regions of our globe. He has broadened knowledge and guided study. During the years following 1865 he even, for a time, deserted his favorite field of labor, fiction, and devoted himself to a popular semi-scientific book, now superseded by later works, entitled “The Illustrated Geography of France and her Colonies.”

Verne has perhaps had a larger share than any other single individual in causing the ever-increasing yearly tide of international travel. And because with mutual knowledge among the nations comes mutual understanding and appreciation, mutual brotherhood; hence Jules Verne was one of the first and greatest of those teachers who are now leading us toward International Peace.

By : Jules Verne (1828 - 1905)

00 - Introduction



01 - The Shark



02 - The Three Documents



03 - The Captain's Children



04 - Lady Glenarvan's Proposal



05 - The Departure of the Duncan



06 - An Unexpected Passenger



07 - Jacques Paganel is undeceived



08 - The Geographer's Resolution



09 - Through the Straits of Magelan



10 - The Course decided



11 - Traveling in Chili



12 - Eleven Thousand Feet aloft



13 - A Sudden Descent



14 - Providentially Rescued



15 - Thalcave



16 - The News of the lost Captain



17 - A Serious Necessity



18 - In Search of Water



19 - The Red Wolves



20 - Strange Signs



21 - A False Trail



22 - The Flood



23 - A Simple Abode



24 - Paganel's Disclosure



25 - Between Fire and Water



26 - The Return on Board



27 - A new Destination



28 - Tristan DAcunha and the Isle of Amsterdam



29 - Cape Town and M. Viot



30 - A Wager And How Decided



31 - The Storm on the Indian Ocean



32 - A Hospitable Colonist



33 - The Quartermaster of the Britannia



34 - preparation for the Journey



35 - A Country of Paradoxes



36 - An Accident



37 - Crime or Calamity



38 - Toline of the Lachlan



39 - Warning



40 - Wealth in the Wilderness



41 - Suspicious Occurences



42 - A startling Discovery



43 - The Plot Unveiled



44 - Four Days of Anguish



45 - Helpless and hopeless



46 - A rough Captain



47 - Navigators and their Discoveries



48 - The Martyr-roll of Navigators



49 - The Wreck of the Macquarie



50 - Canibals



51 - The Dreaded Country



52 - The Maori War



53 - On the Road to Auckland



54 - Introduction to the Cannibals



55 - A Momentous Interview



56 - The Chief's Funeral



57 - Strangely Liberated



58 - The Sacred Mountain



59 - A Bold Stratagem



60 - From Peril to Safety



61 - Why the Duncan went to New Zealand



62 - Ayrton's Obstinacy



63 - A discouraging Confession



64 - A Cry in the Night



65 - Captain Grant's Story



66 - Paganel's last Entanglement


The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia. After finding a bottle the captain had cast into the ocean after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland contact Mary and Robert, the young daughter and son of Captain Grant, through an announcement in a newspaper. The government refuses to launch a rescue expedition, but Lord and Lady Glenarvan, moved by the children's condition, decide to do it by themselves. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known; thus, the expedition would have to circumnavigate the 37th parallel south. The bottle was retrieved from a shark's stomach, so it is impossible to trace its origin by the currents. Remaining clues consist of a few words in three languages. They are re-interpreted several times throughout the novel to make various destinations seem likely.

Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant's children and the crew of his yacht, the Duncan, they set off for South America. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel (he missed his steamer to India by accidentally boarding the Duncan) joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island, and Australia (a pretext to describe the flora, fauna, and geography of numerous places to the targeted audience).

There, they find a former quartermaster of the Britannia, Ayrton, who proposes to lead them to the site of the wreckage. However, Ayrton is a traitor, who was not present during the loss of the Britannia, but was abandoned in Australia after a failed attempt to seize control of the ship to practice piracy. He tries to take control of the Duncan, but by sheer luck, this attempt also fails. However the Glenarvans, the Grant children, Paganel and some sailors are left in Australia, and mistakenly believing that the Duncan is lost, they sail to Auckland, New Zealand, from where they want to come back to Europe. When their ship is wrecked south of Auckland on the New Zealand coast, they are captured by a Māori tribe, but luckily manage to escape and board a ship that they discover, to their astonishment, to be the Duncan.

Ayrton, made a prisoner, offers to trade his knowledge of Captain Grant in exchange for being abandoned on a desert island instead of being surrendered to the British authorities. The Duncan sets sail for Tabor Island, which, by sheer luck, turns out to be Captain Grant's shelter. They leave Ayrton in his place to live among the beasts and regain his humanity.

Ayrton reappears in Verne's later novel, L'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874).

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