Résumé
Résumé de Les Enfants du capitaine Grant
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Readers who enjoy voyages, maps and puzzles will love this adventure with real places and curious animals. It also suits those who like a cheerful cast facing storms, floods and strange lands with humor.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
On a July day in 1864, sailors on a Scottish steam yacht cut open a hammerhead shark. Inside is a crusted bottle, and inside the bottle are three soaked scraps of paper, in English, French and German. Only a few words survive, yet they sound like a cry for help from men lost at sea. Would you cross the world on such a clue?
In Search of the Castaways is a novel by Jules Verne, part of his Extraordinary Voyages. Lord Glenarvan, his wife Helena and the two children of the missing Captain Grant follow the thirty-seventh parallel through South America, Australia and New Zealand. You get a puzzle and a travel story together, with a warm, absent-minded French geographer for company.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A shark delivers a message in piecesFree
- 2A wife's bold plan sends the Duncan south
- 3Across the Andes, the mountain itself moves
- 4A silent guide leads them across the Pampas
- 5A flood teaches them they have searched wrongly
- 6In Australia, a helpful stranger leads the wagon on
- 7In New Zealand, the search ends in captivity
- 8Providence and perseverance drive every step
- 9Reading the message is the real adventure
- 10Verne tells it as a voyage of voices
Point clé 1 sur 10
A shark delivers a message in pieces
The story opens on July 26, 1864, aboard the Duncan, a new steam yacht owned by Lord Glenarvan. The crew hooks a hammerhead shark and cuts it open. In its stomach lies a bottle crusted with sea growth. Glenarvan breaks it and finds three damaged documents, each seeming to copy the same note.
Salt water has erased most of the words, so the group trades fragments across the three languages like people solving a crossword. Piece by piece, a message appears. The ship Britannia of Glasgow sank in June 1862, and her captain and two sailors ask for help at a latitude of thirty-seven degrees eleven minutes. A word ending in gonie makes Lady Helena cry out Patagonia.
Glenarvan asks the Admiralty for a ship, but the Lords refuse. Meanwhile Mary and Robert Grant, the captain's children, arrive at Malcolm Castle on foot. Glenarvan reads much into the words because he badly wants them to be true. A message is only as good as the person who reads it.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
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Who’s who
- Lord Edward Glenarvan
- A generous Scottish peer who owns the yacht Duncan and sets out to save a shipwrecked captain he has never met.
- Lady Helena
- Glenarvan's young wife, who proposes the rescue voyage and keeps her courage through every danger.
- Mary Grant
- Captain Grant's elder daughter, who has raised her brother alone and will do anything to find their father.
- Robert Grant
- Captain Grant's twelve-year-old son, brave and quick, who longs to be a sailor and believes his father is alive.
- Jacques Paganel
- A French geographer who boards the wrong ship by mistake and becomes the expedition's learned, absent-minded guide.
- Major McNabbs
- Glenarvan's calm cousin, a Scottish soldier who rarely speaks, never panics, and notices more than he says.
- John Mangles
- The young captain of the Duncan, loyal to Glenarvan, skilled at sea, and quietly devoted to Mary Grant.
- Thalcave
- A Patagonian guide of few words and great skill with horse and gun, who leads the travelers across the Pampas.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 142,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 9 h 55 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 11 other languages
Questions about Les Enfants du capitaine Grant
What is In Search of the Castaways about?
It follows a Scottish lord and his friends who find a message in a bottle and sail around the world along the thirty-seventh parallel. They hope to rescue Captain Grant, who was lost when his ship, the Britannia, went down.
Who is Paganel in In Search of the Castaways?
Jacques Paganel is a French geographer who boards the Duncan by mistake, thinking it is a ship to India. He joins the search and becomes the group's guide, always learned, talkative and delightfully absent-minded.
Why is the thirty-seventh parallel important in the book?
The damaged message gives a latitude of thirty-seven degrees eleven minutes but no longitude. The travelers decide to follow that line of latitude all the way around the world, which takes them through South America, Australia and New Zealand.
Is In Search of the Castaways a true story?
No, it is fiction written by Jules Verne in the 1860s. The places, animals, history and customs are described from real knowledge of the time, but Captain Grant, the Duncan and the bottle are invented.
Is In Search of the Castaways easy to read?
The chapters are short, the plot moves from one adventure to the next, and the cast is lively and funny. The talks on geography and nature add color, and Paganel's blunders keep the mood light.
Cite this edition
Verne, Jules. In Search of the Castaways. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/in-search-of-the-castaways.
Verne, J. (2026). In search of the castaways. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/in-search-of-the-castaways (Original work published 1867)
Verne, Jules. In Search of the Castaways. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/in-search-of-the-castaways.
@book{verne2026search,
author = {Verne, Jules},
title = {In Search of the Castaways},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/in-search-of-the-castaways},
note = {First published 1867}
}
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