Verne and Birkenhead
John Lamb
Jean-Louis, thank you so much for reading my article and your kind words. I found the Birkenhead N Gram viewer most illuminating and it faithfully matches both the general content of my article and the peak references to Birkenhead in Verne’s work, both in quoting the town directly and indirectly in the three early novels where I contend Verne uses Birkenhead as a literary template (Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874).
The steep plateau in the graph can be explained quite easily …the worldwide attention on the CSS Alabama, which as far as I know is the only vessel that Jules Verne compared to Captain Nemo and the Nautilus (I stand to be corrected upon that one).
Regarding Gordon Bennett, I will amend to ‘In Britain’ regarding his name being used as a sign of incredulity. Agreed the Nantes/St-Nazaire echoes in Liverpool/Birkenhead may have played a role in Verne's affection for Birkenhead, he would have seen many similarities, both physically and historically.
Regarding ‘Pirates’ and Verne’s linking the fictional and the real. I am amazed how many times this word ‘pirate’ is used to describe the CSS Alabama in 19th century literature (and cartoonography, complete with skull and cross bones etc). Abraham Lincoln’s American Secretary of State, William Seward was the worst culprit, I think he uses the word over a dozen times on little over a page of A4 regarding the official enquiry into the CSS Alabama, and that is about par for the course for him. The CSS Alabama was both the most famous pirate ship of the 19th century and the most successful warship in history, sinking over 60 vessels in three oceans. It appears as a plot line in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, but I contend it had a much greater influence on Jules Verne.
I will present a paper regarding the links between the CSS Alabama and the Nautilus to the Jules Verne forum in a few months’ time. It will ask the question If Raphael Semmes’s memoirs of the CSS Alabama were a novel, would there be a case against Jules Verne for blatant plagiarism? Of course, if it went to a modern court, it would be judged by a lay people jury with no previous knowledge of Verne, just a list of comparisons and then the jury would have to decide whether the links were uncanny coincidences or not. There was a similar case a few years back with Harry Potter and JK Rowling and just a few common links / key words, it was thrown out, but could we get Verne off the hook with a modern lay person jury with over 100 links / key words connecting the largely Birkenhead built CSS Alabama with the largely Birkenhead built Nautilus?
William Butcher kindly asked the question why Birkenhead and not Truro, Macau or Lincoln? and I think I gave enough about Birkenhead’s history to show it was a major player in three of the great passions that fascinated Verne – Atlantic cables, The Great Eastern and the American Civil War. Birkenhead also had very close contacts with some of those we know influenced and even sponsored Verne, namely Cyrus Field, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Gordon Bennett and Napoleon III.
Liverpool was not only the greatest slave trading port for the Transatlantic Slave Trade (and therefore shared much in common with Nantes) but according to Harriet Beecher Stowe was also the ‘sacred ground’ which led its abolition, and this contrast too would have fascinated Verne.
Captain Nemo is a similar contrast, his basic adventures are based on a template set by the pro slavery Confederate Raphael Semmes (Atlantis and giant squid excepted), but his morals (reflected in the portraits in his cabin – Lincoln, O’Connell, John Brown drawn by Victor Hugo) are those of the militant abolitionist who will use force if necessary to rid the world of slavery and oppression – i.e. the northern Unionist view in the Civil War. Nemo (nobody) is thus a metaphor for America, at war with itself over the abolition of slavery between 1861-65.
Verne asks in 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, what clues these portraits give to the identity of Nemo, and I am surprised no one has ever tried to answer that question. It is of course much easier to answer if you believe that Nemo’s soul is half Confederate. If you do not believe the Semmes /Alabama link, then you cannot answer Verne’s direct question and a pathway to greater understanding to 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas is blocked off. Verne is stating in print that he is giving clues to help us here, we should act upon them.
Nemo of course later repents and helps to build a new multiracial ‘Mini America’ by helping the resourceful colonists get out of various scrapes by ‘playing god’ on the aptly named Lincoln Island. The plot line of Mysterious Island thus follows Verne’s Deist principles of ‘God Helps Those Who Helps Themselves’ which in French translates to Aide-toi et Dieu t'aidera …which just happens to be the exact words, in French, on the ship’s wheel of the CSS Alabama.
Dear Bill, thank you for your comments, I wanted to pay homage to Verne’s profuse use of illustrations in his books and lavishly illustrate my website.
I am not a Verne expert, but I am, like Verne, a geographer and more importantly an expert in Birkenhead and the Wirral Peninsula and I have applied Birkenhead to Verne’s writings, in much the same way that Quentin Skrabec is an engineer and has applied his engineering expertise to Verne’s writings.
We have then both found new patterns of behaviour as to how Verne must have worked, indeed some of our work crosses over, Quentin has mentioned Birkenhead’s pioneering work in steel ships and how it played into Verne’s novels, and I have mentioned how Verne copies the chemical patent of Prices Candle Works in Birkenhead in making candles on Mysterious Island.
One example of the geography element in Mysterious Island, is that Verne states that the tide goes down 15 feet in three hours, which means it goes down 30 feet in six hours, this is one of the most extreme and rarest tidal ranges in the world (ten feet more than Nantes)…but it is also the tidal range at Birkenhead. Tides play an important role in the plot lines of Mysterious Island, whether it be ebbing to allow Neb to cross from the islet to the mainland, rushing a raft up the Mercy River, uncovering Nemo’s torpedo that blew up the pirate ship, or exposing Dakar’s Grotto towards the end of the novel.
However, there are no tides at all in the South Pacific where Mysterious Island is supposed to be set, as a keen sailor, Verne knows this, and indeed he mentions the tideless Pacific in Robur the Conqueror. This is just one example of how Verne using Birkenhead and Wirral as a template helps Verne adds tides to his writing style and stimulates the four extra plot scenarios described above. Scenarios which otherwise may not have existed.
Verne does something unique.
For his novel Mysterious Island, Verne first maps out over 60 locations in Birkenhead and the Wirral Peninsula and notes down their physical characteristics.
Verne then gets all these ingredients and only then weaves them into the plot, after all the Nautilus (or 80% of it) was built in Birkenhead and here it will die. Verne as an ex theatrical director, used to recycling scenery at the Theatre Lyrique now becomes like a modern-day movie maker on a scrap of a budget where all scenes have to be shot locally and double up for more exotic locations (with the addition of a palm tree here and an orangutan there).
My next submission to the Jules Verne forum will be a chapter-by-chapter dissection of The Mysterious Island and how Birkenhead and Wirral is basically a three-dimensional template for Lincoln Island. Hopefully I will convince people one day that Birkenhead really is indeed the template for these novels.
A little challenge though, are there any two random words in any language in all the world that you can so easily make up the name Semmes
….other than Arne Saknussemm?
This, (and 20,000 Leagues, Mysterious Island and the Floating Island) is what led me to look at Bidston Hill as the possible inspiration for Journey to the Centre of the Earth, it was a tall order because if Bidston Hill was the literary template I had to find nine features described by Verne in the novel.
I had to find
The gnomon of a giant sundial
Lying between two peaks
With a staircase appearing unexpectedly
Three chimneys
A cone
A shadow from the gnomon which touches the Middle Chimney
The shadow touching the middle chimney on June 28th at exactly…
…12 o’clock
And once descending the middle chimney finding a room quiet room below insulated from the noise of cartwheels.
All these (see my article) nine features I found on the roof of Bidston Observatory, Birkenhead because I had faith in Verne’s methods, the only other explanation is coincidence.
I do not think I will have found those nine features matching the mountain Scartaris in Journey to the Centre of the Earth on the roof of Truro Observatory, Macau Observatory, Lincoln Observatory or any other observatory in the world for that matter.
Best wishes
John
Jean-Louis Trudel
As a quick aside, we can find Semmes in a single well-known name: SEMMElweiSs.
Other comments may follow, time allowing.
Jean-Louis Trudel
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