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The "Jules Verne" ship for the New Guinea expedition

From: Garmt de Vries <G.deVries~at~phys.uu.nl>
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 18:04:34 +0100 (CET)
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>
Cc: "J.C.T.Ludeker" <jctl~at~xs4all.nl>

Dear fellow Vernians,

Below I attach a message from Jan Ludeker, one of my friends in the Dutch
JV Society. He tried to post it directly to the forum, but it wasn't
accepted immediately.

Cheers,
Garmt.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear friends,

After contacting several institutions like the Nautical Museum and the
Royal Institute for the Tropics and a friend of mine who is an expert on
nautical affairs, I ended up with the Royal Dutch Geographical Society
(R.D.G.S.).

This Society organised in the 19th century the majority of expeditions to
our former colonies. The expert on the history of such expeditions, Dr.
Paul van den Brink, could immediately answer my question on the to us
unknown steamer "Jules Verne". It is true, that in 1885 the R.D.G.S.
intended to send a ship to Dutch New Guinea, but first they had to raise
the necessary funds. There were long discussions in the Dutch Lower
Chamber but the result was negative, the Dutch Government did not want to
invest a penny on the venture. The R.D.G.S. than decided to try and
organise the expedition themselves. They were informed that in Nantes,
France a steam/sailingship was offered for sale. As the descriptions of
the said vessel fitted well in the ideas of the Society, they sent two
experts to Nantes in order to inspect the ship and open negotiations..

For one reason or another, at the moment still unknown to me, the
transaction fall through and consequently the whole expedition was
cancelled.

In short: the solution of the riddle is, that Jules Verne was not the name
of the ship but the name of the owner. The ship for sale was Jules Verne's
Saint-Michel III, which he had to sell because of the financial
difficulties he had to face, mainly because of his extravagant son, who,
as we all know, was a big spender.

The ship was sold in December 1885 for Francs 55.000 to Prince Nicolas I
of Montenegro, who renamed the "Saint-Michel III" in "Sybil" .

There is a Dutch proverb that says: "He heard a bell ring but he does not
know where the clapper hangs". Newspapers often have this attitude. A
journalist hears somehow, somewhere, something and a story, right or
wrong, is born. That's what happened in the newspaper "Finland" on
December 15. 1885. The journalist in question will not have realized, that
his "slip of the pen", caused 121 years later confusion amongst Jules
Verne fans all over the world.



Jan Ludeker.



Dutch Jules Verne Society,
Received on Fri 24 Feb 2006 - 19:04:44 IST

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