Utterly Brilliant how Semmes / Saknussemm create the Icelandic (Scartaris) scenes in A Journey to the Centre of the EARTH.
John Lamb
Utterly brilliant – How Raphael Semmes creates the Icelandic Scenes in A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) and proves the Saknussemm Dual Cipher.
As usual please grill me on this…this is not coincidence.
Best John
Birkenhead, its Laird shipyard, Raphael Semmes and the Birkenhead built CSS Alabama together with the associated Alabama Claims are mentioned in eleven novels by Jules Verne. In 2025 I provided evidence that in both the novels The Mysterious Island (1873) and The Floating Island (1895) Verne used my hometown of Birkenhead and its Bidston Hill as a literary template with Verne using some of the novels’ illustrations to give additional clues as to the inspiration.
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth creates an obvious problem in linking to Birkenhead to the novel and yet, three factors point to the potential for this.
a) The fact that the only other novel Verne wrote in 1864, the Adventures of Captain Hatteras does indeed start in Birkenhead, the Forward is a ship like the Alabama built for a secret mission. The USS Hatteras being the name of the only warship sunk by the CSS Alabama.
b) The name Arne Saknussemm being a possible homage to Semmes and a cipher ‘Semmes sunk arna…arna being Icelandic for the ‘great eagle’ – the symbol for the United States.
c) An observation from William Butcher (1998) that Verne does indeed work in metaphor. It is important to note that I came across this conclusion independent of Butcher some 20 years later with locations around Birkenhead having both their literal counterpart (Hilbre Island and Safety Islet) and their metaphorical counterpart (Bidston Lighthouse and the volcano Mount Franklin) in the Verne novel The Mysterious Island (1873).
Butcher writes in his notes from 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (1998).
For two of the major scenes of Twenty Thousand Leagues, Nemo’s elevated surveying of the ruins of Atlantis and his claiming of the new continent of Antarctica, it is no exaggeration to say that, mutatis mutandis, the author is drawing inspiration from, and in particular from the King’s Park in Edinburgh. On Verne’s second day outside France, the volcanic Arthur’s Seat dominating the park was the first mountain he had ever visited.
A metaphor converts the sea back into land, the living to the man-made, tentacles into brush, and crabs and lobsters into suits of armour. After a climb up a volcano, after the vegetable and animal kingdoms have led up the Great Chain of Beings, Aronnax again imagines human works.
Jules Verne. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas – A new translation by William Butcher (1998) pxii and xx.
Butcher’s hypothesis, if accepted, means new metaphorical techniques can be used to find the location of some of the real-world locations that Verne used. In converting the living to the man-made there are are of course multiple possibilities available to Verne.
It is therefore necessary to combine many metaphorical features with their real-life counterparts in one small passage and in one small real life space in order for such a relationship to be artistically and statistically acceptable to Verne scholars.
Such a combination exists in the Scartaris scene in A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) where the shadow from that peak touches the middle of three volcanic chimneys at noon on July 29th to point the pathway to the centre of the earth.
The Saknussemm (Semmes sunk Arna) dual cipher points to a possible link with Birkenhead and its Bidston Hill (already used by Verne in two novels – Lamb 2025) but according to the words of Journey to the Centre of the Earth I would have to find the following 12 features on Bidston Hill to prove it was indeed the metaphorical inspiration for the Scartaris shadow pointer scenes in Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Verne’s small passage of text, in his own words, points to the following 12 features lying between Scartaris and Snefells volcano in the Icelandic scenes from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. In this case Verne is using all man-made features as metaphors for his natural features so I had to find the following 12 manmade features on Bidston Hill.
1. the gnomon of a vast sun dial
2. In the midst of the vast surface of snow presented by the hollow between
the two peaks,
3. …a kind of staircase appeared unexpectedly
4. …two peaks one north one south
5. … one south…Scataris
6. One north…an inverted cone…Snaefell
7. At the bottom of the crater there were three chimneys.
8. On the 29th June
9. Scartaris laid down his sharp pointed angular shadow
10. At noon, being at its least extent, it came and fell softly on the edge of the
middle chimney.
11. I approached the Middle Chimney…each of us could then descend …we are
there…at the bottom of the perpendicular chimney…let us have supper and
go to sleep...
12. …"Did you ever spend a quieter night in our little house at Königsberg? No noise of cartwheels, no cries of basket women, no boatmen shouting!"
If I use William Butcher’s theory of Jules Verne using man-made metaphors in
describing natural features (and vice versa) then we can see that Verne describes ‘vast
sundials’, a ‘staircase’, ‘three chimneys’ and an inverted cone thus giving the possibility
that Verne’s comparison is with a building(s) but which building(s)?
I FOUND ALL 12 FEATURES AT BIDSTON OBERVATORY AND LIGHTHOUSE AT
BIRKENHEAD INCLUDING A ROOM SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO HAVE ‘NO NOISE
OF CARTWHEELS, NO CRIES OF BASKET WOMEN, NO BOATMEN SHOUTING’….
…THIS PROVES BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT THAT BIRKENHEAD’S BIDSTON
HILL IS THE LITERARY TEMPLATE FOR THE ICELANDIC SCENES IN JULES VERNE’ A
JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH AND ALSO PROVES THE ARNE
SAKNUSSEMM (SEMMES SUNK ARNA) DOUBLE CIPHER IS REAL!
Please see the attachment for the photographic and historical evidence matched
to the 12 points above.
Again, please grill me on any aspect of this.
Best John