Welcome back to my blog-tour Around the World in Eighty Days, a celebration of the 150th anniversary of Jules Verne’s classic novel. At the moment, we’re near Shanghai, about three miles from that city’s harbor. So far, 50% of Fogg’s 80 days has elapsed, and he’s traversed 11,619 miles, or 48.8% of the distance.
Things are a big snarled, but hang with me. Fogg and Aouda lost Passepartout in Hong Kong. Detective Fix had gotten the servant so drunk and drugged that he’d passed out in an opium den. Fogg missed the steamer Carnatic, due to sail from Hong Kong to Yokohama, where he needed to catch the large, trans-Pacific steamship SS General Grant.
He boarded the tiny sailing ship Tankadere bound for Shanghai after her captain assured him the General Grant started from Shanghai before sailing to Yokohama. He and Princess Aouda both hoped Passepartout had somehow gotten aboard the Carnatic without them.
During the trip to Shanghai, Fogg dined with Detective Fix, never knowing Fix intended to arrest him when the warrant caught up. A typhoon battered the small ship and it seemed they’d reach Shanghai too late to embark aboard the SS General Grant. Just three miles from the harbor, they sighted the huge American steamship on its way out of port. They signaled with a distress flag and cannon, hoping the ship would approach and allow a transfer of passengers.
In 1872, Shanghai held a population of about 700,000, led by a ‘circuit intendant’ named Shen Bingcheng. They abolished the office title of circuit intendant around 1906, and sometime later began calling them mayors.
Today, Shanghai surpasses all other Chinese cities in population, with 24.9 million. It ranks as the second most populous city in the world, and contains the world’s busiest port. Gong Zheng serves as its mayor.
Getting from Hong Kong to Shanghai today doesn’t require sailing for four days in a small sailing ship during a typhoon. You can fly between the two in less than 14 hours, including an 8-hour stop in Chengdu.
If this blogpost series has stirred your interest in Jules Verne, you’ll enjoy reading an upcoming anthology called Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. It’s the first fiction anthology produced by the North American Jules Verne Society. Here’s what its cover will look like, and as soon as it’s published, you’ll see an announcement at the society’s website and here at my blog.
Let’s see if Fogg, Aouda, and Fix will be able to board the General Grant. If they do, they might reach Yokohama by November 14, if you can believe navigational calculations performed by—
Poseidon’s Scribe
When I did a retelling of this for the forum that has published that anthology of tales, I attempted to answer the elephant in the room about Phileas. If we assume that is he 40 or so (born in 1832) then where are his parents? Answer: When he was a small boy, his father was killed in the Sixth War, and unable to bear the loss, his mother committed suicide to be with her husband, prompting Phileas’s grandmother to look after him until adulthood.
By Sixth War, I presume you mean the sixth of the Xhosa Wars, from 1834-1836. I think your backstory for Fogg is as likely as any other. It fits all the known facts about him, and accounts for his personality traits. I’d say only a very rare woman would commit suicide while serving as a single parent for a 2-4 year old boy, but it’s not implausible.