20,000 leagues under the sea

The year 1866 was marked by a strange event, an unexplainable occurrence which is undoubtedly still fresh in everyone's memory. Those living in coastal towns or in the interior of continents were aroused by all sorts of rumours; but it was seafaring people who were particularly excited. ... Skippers and masters of Europe and America, ... and the various governments of both continents were deeply concerned.

Several ships had recently met at sea 'an enormous thing,' a long slender object which was sometimes phosphorescent and which was infinitely larger and faster than a whale.

The facts concerning this apparition, entered in various logbooks, agreed closely with one another as to the structure of the object or creature in question, the incredible speed of its movements, this surprising power of its locomotion and the strange life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a member of the whale family, it was larger than any so far classified by scientists. Neither Cuvier, Lacepede, Dumeril nor Quatrefages would have admitted that such a monster could exist - unless they had seen it with their own scientists' eyes.


Translated from French by Anthony Bonner