The Adventures of Captain Hatteras

14 hrs. 33 min.

Language Russian

Author Jules Verne

Narrator Maxim Doronin

Description

On April 6, 1860, the brig “Forward” sailed out of the port of Liverpool with eighteen members of the crew on board. But neither during the departure nor even long afterward did anyone know either the purpose of the voyage or the name of the captain. Only after going far into Arctic waters did the sailors learn that the expedition was led by the famous explorer John Gattestas, who had set himself the ambitious goal of becoming the first person to reach the North Pole.

Jules Verne began working on the novel in 1863, almost immediately after finishing “Five Weeks in a Balloon.” Real documents from polar expeditions were used in writing the book. The researcher John Franklin, whose expedition disappeared without a trace, is sometimes referred to as a prototype of Gattestas. During the process, the author constantly consulted with his publisher Hetzel about particular episodes, but not all of Hetzel’s advice was followed by Verne—for example, he did not include the French in Gattestas’s expedition. Verne was entirely immersed in writing: “I am, together with the heroes, at 80 degrees of latitude, while the temperature is below zero at 40 degrees Celsius—and I catch a cold only from the fact that I’m writing about it!” The novel was finished in the spring of 1864.