Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the first chapter of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

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Values today we will be beginning 20,000 leagues under the sea by Jules Verne part one chapter one a shifting reef.

The year 1866 was signalized by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon which doubtless no one has yet forgotten, not to mention rumors which agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind.

Even in the interior of continents, seafaring men were particularly excited.

Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries and the governments of several states on the two continents were deeply interested in the matter.

For some time past, vessels had been met by an enormous thing, a long object, spindleshaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale.

The facts relating to this apparition, entered in various logbooks, agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed.

If it was a cetacean, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science, taking into consideration the mean of observations made at divers times, rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object a length of 200ft, equally with the exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile in width and three in length, we might fairly conclude that this mysterious being surpassed greatly all dimensions admitted by the ichthyologists of the day, if it existed at all, and that it did exist, was an undeniable fact.

And with that tendency which disposes the human mind in favor of the marvelous, we can understand the excitement produced in the entire world by this supernatural apparition.

As to classing it in the list of fables, the idea was out of the question.

On 20 July 1866, the steamer governor Higginson of the Calcutta and Burnock Steam Navigation Company had met this moving mass 5 miles off the east coast of Australia.

Captain Baker thought at first that he was in the presence of an unknown sandbank.

He even prepared to determine its exact position when two columns of water, projected by an inexplicable object, shot with a hissing noise 150ft up into the air.

Now, unless the sandbank had been submitted to the intermittent eruption of a geyser, the governor Higginson had to do neither more nor less than with an aquatic mammal unknown till then, which threw up from its blowholes columns of water mixed with air and vapor.

Similar facts were observed on 23 July, in the same year in the Pacific Ocean, by the Columbus of the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company.

But this extraordinary sataceous creature could transport itself from one place to another with surprising velocity, as in an interval of three days, the governor Higginson and the Columbus had observed it at two different points of the chart, separated by a distance of more than 700 nautical leagues.

15 days later, 2000 miles further off, the Helvedia of the campaign nationale and the Shannon of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, sailing to windward in that portion of the Atlantic lying between the United States and Europe, respectively, signaled the monster to each other in 42 degrees 15 minutes north latitude and 60 degrees 35 minutes west long.

In these simultaneous observations, they thought themselves justified in estimating the minimum length of the mammal at more than 350ft, as the Shannon and Helvetia were of smaller dimensions than it, though they measured 300ft overall.

Now, the largest of whales, those which frequent those parts of the sea round the aleutian, Kalumic and Umgulich islands, have never exceeded the length of 60 yards, if they attain that, these reports arriving one after the other, with fresh observations made on board the transatlantic ship Pierre, a collision which occurred between the aetna of the Inman line and the monster, a pro se verbal directed by the officers of the french frigate Normandy.

A very accurate survey, made by the staff of Commodore Fitzjames on board the Lord Clyde, greatly influenced public opinion.

Light thinking people jested upon the phenomenon, McGrave.

Practical countries such as England, America and Germany treated the matter more seriously.

In every place of great resort, the monster was the fashion.

They sang of it in the cafes, ridiculed it in the papers, and represented it on the stage.

All kinds of stories were circulated regarding it.

There appeared in the papers caricatures of every gigantic and imaginary creature, from the white whale, the terrible moby D*** of hyperborean regions, to the immense kraken, whose tentacles could entangle a ship of 500 tons and hurry it into the abyss of the ocean.

The legends of ancient times were even resuscitated, and the opinions of Aristotle and Pliny revived.

Who admitted the existence of these monsters, as well as the norwegian tales of Bishop Pontipidian, the accounts of Paul Hagid, and, last of all, the reports of Mr.

Harrington, whose good faith no one could suspect, who affirmed that being on board the Castilian in 1857, he had seen this enormous serpent, which had never, until that time, frequented any other seas but those of the ancient constitutional.

Then burst forth the interminable controversy between the credulous and the incredulous and the society's, the savants and the scientific journals.

The question of the monster inflamed all minds.

Editors of scientific journals, quarreling with believers in the supernatural, spilled seas of ink during this memorable campaign, some even drawing blood, for from the sea serpent they came to direct personalities.

For six months, war was waged with various fortune in the leading articles of the geographical institution of Brazil, the Royal Academy of Science of Berlin, the British association, the Smithsonian Institute of Washington, in the discussions of the indian archipelago, of the cosmos, of the Abbe Moyno, in the Mitilingen of Peterman, in the scientific chronicles of the great journals of France and other countries.

The cheaper journals replied keenly and with inexhaustible zest.

These satirical writers parodied a remark of Linius, quoted by the adversaries of the monster, maintaining that nature did not make fools, and adjured their contemporaries not to give the lie to nature by admitting the existence of krakens, sea serpents, moby dicks, and other lucabrations of delirious sailors.

At length, an article in a well known satirical journal by a favorite contributor, the chief of the staff, settled the monster like Apollodis, giving it the death blow amidst an universal burst of laughter, Witt had conquered science.

During the first months of the year 1867.

The question seemed buried, never to revive when new facts were brought before the public.

It was then no longer a scientific problem to be solved, but a real danger seriously to be avoided.

The question took quite another shape.

The monster became a small island, a rock, a reef, but a reef of indefinite and shifting proportions.

On 5 March 1867 the Moravian of the Montreal Ocean Company, finding herself during the night in 27 degrees 30 minutes latitude and 72 degrees 15 minutes longitude, struck on her starboard quarter.

Iraq Mark did no chart for that part of the sea.

Under the combined efforts of the wind and its 400 hp it was going at the rate of 13 knots.

Had it not been for the superior strength of the whole of the Moravian she would have been broken by the shock and gone down with the 237 passengers she was bringing home from Canada.

The accident happened about 05:00 in the morning.

As the day was breaking, the officers of the quarter deck hurried to the after part of the vessel.

They examined the sea with the most scrupulous attention.

They saw nothing but a strong eddy about three cables length distant, as if the surface had been violently agitated.

The bearings of the place were taken exactly and the Moravian continued its route without apparent damage.

Had it struck on a submerged rock or on an enormous wreck?

They could not tell.

But on examination of the ship's bottom when undergoing repairs, it was found that part of her keel was broken.

This fact, so graven itself might perhaps have been forgotten like many others, if three weeks after it had not been reenacted under similar circumstances.

But thanks to the nationality of the victim of the shock, thanks to the reputation of the company to which the vessel belonged, the circumstance became extensively circulated.

The 13 April 1867.

The sea being beautiful, the breeze favorable, the Scotia of the Cunard company's line found herself in 15 degrees twelve minutes longitude and 45 degrees 37 minutes latitude.

She was going at the speed of 13 knots and a half.

At 17 minutes past four in the afternoon, whilst the passengers were assembled at lunch in the great Saloon, a slight shock was felt on the whole of the Scotia.

On her quarter, a little aft of the port paddle.

The Scotia had not struck, but she had been struck and seemingly by something rather sharp and penetrating than blunt.

The shock had been so slight that no one had been alarmed.

Had it not been for the shouts of the carpenter's watch who rushed onto the bridge exclaiming, we are sinking.

We are sinking.

At first the passengers were much frightened, but Captain Anderson hastened to reassure them.

The danger could not be imminent.

Nova Scotia, divided into seven compartments by strong partitions, could brave with impunity any leak.

Captain Anderson went down immediately into the hold.

He found that the sea was pouring into the fifth compartment, and the rapidity of the influx proved that the force of the water was considerable.

Fortunately, this compartment did not hold the boilers or the fires would have been immediately extinguished.

Captain Anderson ordered the engines to be stopped at once, and one of the men went down to ascertain the extent of the injury.

Some minutes afterwards, they discovered the existence of a large hole of two yards in diameter in the ship's bottom.

Such a leak could not be stopped, and the Scotia, her paddles half submerged, was obliged to continue her course.

She was then 300 miles from Cape Clear, and after three days delay, which caused great uneasiness in Liverpool, she entered the basin of the company.

The engineers visited the Scotia, which was put in dry dock.

They could scarcely believe it possible.

At two yards and a half below watermark was a regular rent in the form of an isosceles triangle.

The broken place in the iron plates was so perfectly defined that it could not have been more neatly done by a punch.

It was clear then that the instrument producing the perforation was not of a common stamp, and after having been driven with prodigious strength and piercing an iron plate, one three eighthick had withdrawn itself by a retrograde motion.

Truly inexplicable.

Such was the last fact which resulted in exciting once more the torrent of public opinion.

From this moment, all unlucky casualties which could not be otherwise accounted for were put down to the monster.

Upon this imaginary creature rested the responsibility of all these shipwrecks, which unfortunately were considerable.

For of 3000 ships whose loss was annually recorded at Lloyd's, the number of sailing and steamships supposed to be totally lost from the absence of all news amounted to not less than 200.

Now it was the monster who justly or unjustly was accused of their disappearance.

And thanks to it, communication between the different continents became more and more dangerous.

The public demanded preemptorily that the seas should at any price be relieved from this formidable cetacean.

Thank you for joining bite at a.

Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics again.

My name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of 20,000 leagues under the sea.

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