In Search of the Castaways is a novel by the
FrenchThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
writer
Jules VerneJules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
, published in 1867–1868. The original edition, published by
HetzelPierre-Jules Hetzel was a French editor and publisher. He is best known for his extraordinarily lavishly illustrated editions of Jules Verne's novels highly prized by collectors today...
, contains a number of illustrations by
Édouard RiouÉdouard Riou was a French painter and illustrator of books by Jules Verne.Riou was a pupil of Charles-François Daubigny and Gustave Doré, graduated in 1859...
. In 1876 it was republished by George Routledge & Sons as a three volume set titled "A Voyage Round The World". The three volumes were subtitled "South America", "Australia", and "New Zealand".
Plot summary
The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the
Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the
Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glenarvan of
ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
contact Mary and Robert, the young daughter and son of Captain Grant, through an announcement in a newspaper. Moved by the children's condition, Lord and Lady Glenarvan decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the
latitudeIn geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...
(37 degrees) is known; thus, the expedition would have to circumnavigate the
37th parallel southThe 37th parallel south is a circle of latitude that is 37 degrees south of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, Australasia, the Pacific Ocean and South America....
. 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
yachtA yacht is a recreational boat or ship. The term originated from the Dutch Jacht meaning "hunt". It was originally defined as a light fast sailing vessel used by the Dutch navy to pursue pirates and other transgressors around and into the shallow waters of the Low Countries...
, the
Duncan, they set off for
South AmericaSouth America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer
Jacques PaganelJacques Eliacin François Marie Paganel is one of the main characters in Jules Verne's novel In Search of the Castaways...
(he missed his steamer to
IndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
by accidentally boarding on the
Duncan) joins the search. They explore
PatagoniaPatagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...
,
Tristan da Cunha IslandTristan da Cunha is a remote volcanic group of islands in the south Atlantic Ocean and the main island of that group. It is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying from the nearest land, South Africa, and from South America...
, Amsterdam Island, and
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
(a pretext to describe the flora, fauna, and geography of numerous places to the targeted audience).
There, they find a former quarter-master of the
Britannia,
AyrtonTom Ayrton is a fictional character who appears in two novels by French author Jules Verne. He is first introduced as a major character in the novel In Search of the Castaways...
, 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
piracyPiracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
. He tries to take control of the
Duncan, but out of 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
AucklandThe Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
,
New ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, 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, with their greatest surprise, 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 the Tabor Island, which, out of 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 IslandThe Mysterious Island is a novel by Jules Verne, published in 1874. The original edition, published by Hetzel, contains a number of illustrations by Jules Férat. The novel is a sequel to Verne's famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and In Search of the Castaways, though thematically it is...
, 1874).
Adaptations
- 1877 - Los sobrinos del Capitán Grant ("Captain Grant's nephews"), a Spanish comic zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...
(operetta) by Miguel Ramos Carrión and Manuel Fernández Caballero.
- 1936 - Дети капитана Гранта (Deti kapitana Granta), Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, directed by Vladimir VajnshtokVladimir Petrovich Vajnshtok was a Soviet film director and, under the name Vladimir Vladimirov, screenwriter.-Selected filmography:director* Rubicon * Storm ...
and starring Nikolai CherkasovNikolay Konstantinovich Cherkasov , was a Soviet actor and a People's Artist of the Soviet Union.-Career:He was born in Saint Petersburg . From 1919 he was a mime artist in Petrograd's Maryinsky Theatre, the Bolshoi Theatre, and elsewhere...
, film score composed by Isaak DunayevskyIsaak Osipovich Dunayevsky was the biggest Soviet film composer and conductor of the 1930s and 1940s, who achieved huge success in music for operetta and film comedies, frequently working with the film director Grigori Aleksandrov...
. The film was released in USA as Captain Grant's Children. (see ).
- 1962 - In Search of the Castaways
In Search of the Castaways is a 1962 Walt Disney Productions feature film starring Hayley Mills and Maurice Chevalier in a tale about a worldwide search for a shipwrecked sea captain. The film was directed by Robert Stevenson from a screenplay by Lowell S. Hawley based upon Jules Verne's 1868...
, United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, directed by Robert StevensonRobert Stevenson was an English film writer and director. He was educated at Cambridge University where he became the president of both the Liberal Club and the Cambridge Union Society....
and starring Maurice ChevalierMaurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...
, Hayley MillsHayley Mills is an English actress. The daughter of John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, and sister of actress Juliet Mills, Mills began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for Tiger Bay , the Academy Juvenile Award...
, and George SandersGeorge Sanders was a British actor.George Sanders may also refer to:*George Sanders , Victoria Cross recipient in World War I...
. Songs by the Sherman BrothersThe Sherman Brothers are an American songwriting duo that specialize in musical films, made up of Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman ....
were: "Castaway", "Enjoy It!", "Let's Climb", "Merci Beaucoup". (see ).
- 1985 - В поисках капитана Гранта
V poiskakh kapitana Granta is a 1986 Soviet 7-part television miniseries adaptation of Jules Verne's novel In Search of the Castaways directed by Stanislav Govorukhin. It was shoot on the Odessa Film Studio and Bulgarian Boyana Film in 1985.- Plot :The film consists of two subplots...
(V poiskakh kapitana Granta, In Search of Captain Grant, "Децата на капитан Грант"), BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
- Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, TV mini-series directed by Stanislav GovorukhinStanislav Sergeyevich Govorukhin has been one of the most popular Soviet and Russian film directors since the 1960s...
starring Nikolai Yeryomenko, Jr., Lembit Ulfsak, Aleksandr AbdulovAleksandr Gavrilovich Abdúlov was a notable Soviet/Russian actor....
, Kosta TsonevKosta Tsonev, is a Bulgarian actor of Greek heritage starring in theatre, TV and cinema. He was born on 10 June 1929 in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia. He studied at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts. He has been married three times: twice to Anahid Tacheva and then to his present wife...
, Anya Pencheva. (see )
External links