The Mysterious Island

[aggie80]

I don't know how many of you are fans of the works of Jules Verne, but in one of his books he talks about the Civil War. Specifically, if you look at the first part of Chapter 2, you will see some description, including a listing of battles. Any of you knowledgeable types tell me:

1. Does the storm discussed in Chapter 1 have any basis in reality, or is it strickly an invention of the writer?

2. Does is seem likely that someone from Massachusetts actually followed the trail given for Captain Harding?

The Mysterious Island

Regardless of the historical accuracy, the book is great fun, a sort of Swiss Family Robinson adventure, complete with Pirates and a mysterious entity. For any fans of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, you should read this one! It has a real surprise ending! It ranks up there in my favorites, along with the Count of Monte Cristo.

[hoosier]

A movie based on this book was shown on the Hallmark channel Saturday night. Patrick Stewart played Capt. Nemo.

Unfortunately, I missed the first half hour of the movie, so if the movie contained any of the material from the first couple of chapters of the book, I missed that part.

Pretty good movie. I'll have to see if I can find the book.

[aggie80]

Totally missed that movie! I would love to have seen it. I'll have to keep my eyes open for it.

[aggie80]

Here is the applicable passage:

. . . Such were the loud and startling words which resounded through the air, above the vast watery desert of the Pacific, about four o'clock in the evening of the 23rd of March, 1865.

Few can possibly have forgotten the terrible storm from the northeast, in the middle of the equinox of that year. The tempest raged without intermission from the 18th to the 26th of March. Its ravages were terrible in America, Europe, and Asia, covering a distance of eighteen hundred miles, and extending obliquely to the equator from the thirty-fifth north parallel to the fortieth south parallel. Towns were overthrown, forests uprooted, coasts devastated by the mountains of water which were recipitated on them, vessels cast on the shore, which the published accounts numbered by hundreds, whole districts leveled by waterspouts which destroyed everything they passed over, several thousand people crushed on land or drowned at sea; such were the traces of its fury, left by this devastating tempest. . . .

The full book can be found at the link in the first post and the above section comes from the first page.

[Robert B. Condon]

I am a big Verne fan and have read most of his maor titles. For the Civil War also see The Blockade Runner. It's more like a novella than a true novel. Five Weeks in a Balloon is good also because the whole book revolves around a flight across the African continent.