The blockade breakers
Die Blockadebrecher (also Die Blockade-Brecher ) is a short story by the French author Jules Verne . The short story was first published in October 1865 under the French title Études de moeurs contemporaines. Les forceurs de blocus published in the Musée des Familles magazine. The short story was first published in book form in 1871 as an appendix to the novel Eine schwimmende Stadt (Une ville flottante) . The first German-language edition was entitled Die Blockade-Brecher . The English title is The Blockade Runners .
action
The story describes the creation and the journey of the then modern steamship Delphin . The client is the shipowner Vincent Playfair. During the American Civil War there was a sea blockade off the coast of the southern states. The blockade almost brought the cotton trade to a standstill. As a result, the cotton weaving mills in Glasgow have to stop working, the Confederates lack ammunition and important goods. To a young businessman, this appears to be an ideal situation for making as much profit as possible with little investment. He made an agreement with his uncle Vincent Playfair to make a horrific profit if he had a ship that could break the blockade. The uncle can be called conditions and the extent to which the nephew can meet them (type of ship, crew, armament). The Delphin is laid on the keel, a ship with a shallow draft, the most modern propulsion technology and without armament. It is loaded with ammunition and war goods in order to sail to Charleston, to break the blockade, to sell the goods dearly and to buy cheap cotton.
The Delphin is sailing with a handpicked crew from Glasgow to Charleston. There is also a man on board who falsely poses as a sailor and his apprentice who falsely poses as a boy. It is the servant of the Halliburt family. The father is imprisoned in Charleston as a Northerner, the seaman is the family servant and the apprentice is the lovely daughter Jenny Halliburt in a trouser role. Jenny wins the respect, the affection and then the love of James and leads him to use the superb ship and the good crew for a nobler purpose than the making of boring profits.
The Dolphin is leaving Charleston Harbor in South Carolina with a load of cotton to break the blockade . In exchange, she is bringing weapons back to the southern states for the Confederate Army. Meanwhile there is a romance between James Playfair, who is the son of the shipowner Vincent Playfair, and Mrs. Jenny Halliburtt. Jenny, through her relationship with James, is positively influencing the purpose of the ship's activities.
literature
- Heinrich Pleticha (ed.): Jules Verne manual . Deutscher Bücherbund / Bertelsmann, Stuttgart and Munich 1992.
- Volker Dehs and Ralf Junkerjürgen: Jules Verne . Voices and interpretations of his work. Fantastic Library Wetzlar, Wetzlar 2005.
- Volker Dehs : Jules Verne . Jules Verne. A critical biography. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2005. ISBN 3-538-07208-6
Web links
- The blockade breaker as an e-book in HTML on zeno.org
- The blockade breakers in Andreas Fehrmann's Jules Verne Collection