Jules Verne's A Floating City
Verne's 1871 novel of his own 1867 crossing on the Great Eastern. Good as a travelogue today, thin as a story.
Where it came from
In spring 1867 Jules Verne and his brother Paul sailed from Liverpool to New York on Brunel's Great Eastern, then went up to see Niagara Falls before returning. Verne turned it into Une ville flottante, A Floating City (1871). The title is the ship itself: a city afloat, with thousands of people aboard.
The storyline
The narrator (essentially Verne) boards the Great Eastern. He meets an old friend, Captain Fabian MacElwin, a British officer who is heartbroken: the woman he loved, Ellen, was forced to marry another man and has lost her reason from grief. It turns out that Ellen is aboard, with her cruel husband, Harry Drake, a gambler who married her for money.
Through the crossing, storms, shipboard life and gossip, tension builds between Fabian and Drake, until a duel is arranged in America. Before it can happen, Drake is killed by lightning during a storm at sea (a convenient act of heaven). At Niagara, Ellen's mind returns, and she and Fabian can be together.
Is it any good today?
Honestly, the romance is melodrama and the plot is thin. What makes it worth reading is the ship: Verne's eyewitness description of the Great Eastern, her engines, her paddle wheels, her crowds, the storm that smashed her wheel, and life aboard the largest ship in the world. It's a short read and best taken as a travel journal by a man who loved machines. For the ship, see the Great Eastern.
Key facts
- A Floating City (1871) is based on Verne's own 1867 Great Eastern crossing
- The story: Fabian, Ellen and her villainous husband Harry Drake; ends at Niagara Falls
- Worth reading today mainly for the eyewitness picture of the Great Eastern