The Thing in the Sea

Episode One of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

Jules Verne published Vingt mille lieues sous les mers in 1870; the English translation by Lewis Mercier followed in 1873, and it is the one most English readers have met. The dates, positions, ship names and measurements in this episode are Verne's own. The Scotia was a real Cunard liner and the Abraham Lincoln is named for a president then five years dead. Verne wrote about an electric submarine crossing oceans at a time when real submarines were small, hand-cranked and lethal to their crews, and he got a surprising amount right. The illustrations are the engravings Alphonse de Neuville and Edouard Riou made for the 1871 Hetzel edition.

Band

Green · Independent readers, early, about 8 to 10

Length

medium · about 708 words in 5 sections · 3 pictures

Source

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Verne, Jules · Project Gutenberg

First published

see the About page in the reader

Regions

Canada · United States

Included formats

• · Web reader and PDF
• · EPUB for e-readers
• · Home-print sheet
• · Folded booklet
• · Binder edition (8.5 × 11)
• · Worksheet
• · Quick Check (10 questions) with answer key
• · Read-aloud script

Readers are engineered from the original public-domain text with AI under HummingRead’s published canon and Content Philosophy, checked by automated audit and sampled by a person. Pictures are made with AI to HummingRead’s brief for each story. How a reader is made.