Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I agree that the steamer from New York is the weakest link. Everything else (train schedules and so forth) I'm pretty happy to accept for the reasons already given, but the book is explicit about Fogg believing he can catch a steamer leaving New York on the 11th, which at the original estimate of 9 days puts Fogg in Liverpool on the 20th. And, indeed, we get confirmation that the boat did arrive on the 20th. (Andrew Stuart, on the 21st, says "the China the only steamer he could have taken from New York to get here in time arrived yesterday".) In that we seem to have confirmation that Fogg should have accepted he was in New York on the 11th, and left on the 12th, and for those dates to be accurate.
But, conversely, while a few ships at this time could make it from New York to Queenstown in just under 8 days, it seems very unlikely for the Henrietta to make it in that time given her reported top speed and the circumstances. So Fogg making Queenstown by the 19th, which is necessary for the last of the story to play out, becomes unlikely unless he really had left New York on the 11th. (The China may have seen the same weather problems as the Henrietta, and taken 10 days rather than 9, thus fitting a departure on the 10th.) And in this we seem to have confirmation that everything adds up as explained in the book, and it all seems quite deliberate.
The problem with the previous paragraph is finding justification in the text: why would Fogg think a steamer left New York on the 11th?
The closest I can come up with is from chapter 24, the first time we get a date for New York: "Phileas Fogg was therefore justified in hoping that he would reach San Francisco by the 2nd of December, New York by the 11th, and London on the 20th..." This reads to me as if he chose the 11th not because he was certain of a boat on that date, but because it was 9 days before the 20th (the time he knew he needed to traverse the Atlantic). I think that he was just assuming he could get a boat, even if he had to bribe or buy his way through; it was a tactic that had got him this far.
That would have been okay, and consistent with his behaviour to date, but at some point we get a departure time of 9pm as well, which suggests something more explicit than wishful thinking. I can come up with imagined explanations for this (maybe it's just the time the transatlantic steamers generally leave New York, or we'd had an example of a boat leaving ahead of schedule, or the schedule might have changed in the time Fogg had been travelling), but I cannot remember nor find any hint in the text. Maybe I missed it, maybe the translation missed it, maybe the editor removed it, or maybe the author forgot to provide a suitable explanation.
Whatever. It was certainly much easier just to take the events as presented than to backtrack through and try and verify the details, so the flaw (if flaw it is) doesn't seem too devastating to me. (But it was a puzzle, and I'm a sucker for puzzles which is how I came to spend far more time on this than I should have.)
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You are making my head hurt. My theory is simply that Verne decided to sacrifice reality for the sake of plot, trusting that readers would either ignore or fail to be bothered by the problem of the schedules. I think he wanted to manipulate the readers; he wanted everyone to groan, Oh no! at the apparent failure after the epic struggle, just so he could then turn around and make everyone happy again with Fogg's success. Which is fine; I was sufficiently entertained and did not wish I could throw the book across the room for pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the end.
Related to time: We keep hearing about Passepartout's watch, but is there ever any mention of Fogg having a timepiece and setting it to local time? I can't remember.