Boats in A Series of Unfortunate Events

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In the children's book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, there are various fictional boats and submarines where events take place.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 The Beatrice
2 The Carmelita
3 The Great Unknown
4 The Prospero
5 The Queequeg
6 Outrigger

[edit] The Beatrice

The Beatrice
A Series of Unfortunate Events place

First Visit	The Penultimate Peril
Later Visits	The End
Size	Roughly the size of a large bed
Owned by:	Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire
Type	boat

The Beatrice was named after Beatrice Baudelaire, the woman Lemony Snicket dedicates all of his books to, and is implied to have been built by Bertrand Baudelaire, Beatrice's husband. The boat first appeared in The Penultimate Peril when Carmelita Spats was using it in the pool on the Hotel Denouement's rooftop salon. At this point the name Carmelita was taped on the ship over its real name. When the hotel caught fire Count Olaf, and Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, set sail on the ship. Count Olaf then removed the name Carmelita, revealing beneath it the name Count Olaf. They were stranded on the ship with only beans to eat until a storm washed the boat and all its contents to an island's coastal shelf. Over a year later, Violet reconstructed the ship to depart from the island to civilization, and removed the name "Count Olaf" to reveal the boat's original name, "Beatrice".

[edit] The Carmelita

The Carmelita
A Series of Unfortunate Events place

First Visit	The Grim Grotto
Later Visits	The Penultimate Peril (mentioned)
Owned by:	Fernald and Fiona
Type	Submarine

The Carmelita, which makes its first appearance in The Grim Grotto, is a submarine named after Carmelita Spats. It is in the shape of a giant octopus, and the interior is decorated with numerous eye insignias that are similar to the tattoo on Count Olaf's ankle. There is a large room in which some of the Snow Scouts, Prufrock Preparatory School students, and other kidnapped children are forced to row long metal oars that function as the arms of the octopus, thereby steering the submarine. It is much larger than the Queequeg, which can fit inside the Carmelita.

In The Penultimate Peril, Count Olaf states that the submarine was stolen by Fernald and Fiona. What happened to it afterwards is unknown, but it may have been destroyed, since Esmé Squalor's flame-imitating dress, last mentioned as being aboard the submarine, washed up on the shores of Olaf-Land in The End.

[edit] The Great Unknown

Name unknown (called "The Great Unknown" by the Snickets)
A Series of Unfortunate Events place

First Visit	The Grim Grotto (seen on radar and through porthole)
Later Visits	The End (mentioned)
Type	Unknown; possibly submarine

For obvious reasons, not much is known about the Great Unknown (which is called this in The End). All that is known is on radar where it appears in the shape of a question mark and that it seems to show up at the most inconvenient times, or just when people think a situation is about to get better. On radar it is larger than both the submarines Carmelita and Queequeg and may in fact be neither a submarine nor a boat at all. Although it first appeared during The Grim Grotto, where it was shown that both Captain Widdershins and Count Olaf are afraid of it (the latter implies that it is a submarine, but its nature is left ambiguous). This shows how it is used as a more obvious metaphor for their fear of the unknown in general. It should also be noted that Count Olaf tells Carmelita Spats not to tap dance while returning to the Carmelita during the time the sub was being threatened by The Great Unknown, because, as he says "I don't want to show up on their sonar." By saying that the Great Unknown has a sonar detector, Olaf implies that it is a submarine, because sea creatures obviously do not have sonar.

During The End, it is mentioned that the Queequeg sailed out to sea with Kit Snicket, the Incredibly Deadly Viper, Captain Widdershins, and his stepchildren Fernald and Fiona on board, to find the self-sustaining hot air mobile home where Hector and the Quagmire triplets were living, in order to aid them in a battle against trained V.F.D. eagles. A shipwrecked Kit later tells the Baudelaires that the eagles popped the balloons of Hector's mobile home and the falling wreckage destroyed the Queequeg. There, all but Kit and the viper chose to be taken by the approaching Great Unknown, although it is unknown whether it rescued or captured them. Kit states that her brother (although she does not specify which) calls the question mark "The Great Unknown", which is often a euphemism for what comes after death. By the end of The End, the Quagmires, Hector, Captain Widdershins, Fernald, and Fiona, and possibly Phil and the Baudelaires are taken aboard.

[edit] The Prospero

The Prospero
A Series of Unfortunate Events place

First Visit	The Reptile Room
Later Visits	Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, The End (mentioned)
Location	Daedalus Dock, in Hazy Harbor
Owned by:	A married couple
Type	Ship

In the fictional series A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket, the Prospero is the ship belonging to the V.F.D. It is anchored along Daedalus Dock (in Hazy Harbor), and among other things makes journeys to Peru.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] In regards to Uncle Monty

The Prospero (named after Prospero, a character who can control the sea in Shakespeare's The Tempest) plays its biggest role in The Reptile Room.

In The Reptile Room, Count Olaf (masquerading as Stephano) attempts to take the Baudelaires with him to Perú, where he plans to kill two of the Baudelaires, and wait with the third till he/she comes of age (thus acquiring the enormous Baudelaire fortune). His plan is foiled, however, when his car crashes into Mr. Poe's automobile.

Olaf had acquired the tickets from the late Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, who had shredded Olaf's original ticket (having suspected him of espionage).

The ship was scheduled to leave at 8:00 to some unknown destination, but in actuality left at 5:00, in order to take volunteers out of the country. Count Olaf was unaware of this schedule change ¹ (possibly because it was written on the special V.F.D. tickets Dr. Montgomery had presumably purchased), but intended to leave much earlier (in order to, "have time for a bottle of wine before lunch").

A man on the Black Rapids Deck (see below) attempted to explain why the ship was leaving early, but was only heard to shout out the words, "Phase Two,"² and, "Drat!"

In The End, it is revealed by Ishmael that the ship was originally called the Pericles (named after a ruler of Athens in ancient Greece).

[edit] Crew

The woman with the beaded necklace

One of the two owners of the Prospero; wife of the man with the corsage.

The man with the corsage

One of the two owners of the Prospero; husband of the woman with the beaded necklace.

Captain Julio Sham

Captain of the Prospero. Both Count Olaf and a person known only as J. (possibly Jacques Snicket) have disguised themselves as this gentleman. Whether there is a real Captain Sham or whether it is simply a generic name for the disguise is unknown.

The following is a list of the crew. It is of note that each of the crew members has the last name of some well-known children's author.

Sailor Bellairs
Sailor Cleary

Author of Ramona Quimby, Age 8, one of the V.F.D. encoded books assigned by Kit Snicket for the students of Prufrock Preparatory School to read.

Sailor Creech
Sailor Dahl

Author of Matilda, one of the V.F.D. encoded books assigned by Kit Snicket for the students of Prufrock Preparatory School to read.

Sailor Danziger
Sailor Eager
Sailor Gantos
Sailor Griffin (?; there are many children's authors by the name of Griffin)
Sailor Kalman (?)
Sailor Kerr
Sailor Konigsburg (The author of The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, among other books)
Sailor Lowry The author of "The Giver", "Gathering Blue," among other books.
Sailor Peck
Sailor Scieszka (the author of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" among others)
Sailor Seibold (?) (not to be confused with Gustav Sebald)
Sailor Selznick (The co-author of The Doll People and The Meanest Doll in the World )
Sailor Snicket
Sailor Snyder
Sailor Sones
Sailor Walsh (?)
Sailor Whelan (?)
Sailor Woodson (?)

[edit] The Ship

[edit] Black Rapids Deck

From here a person tried to explain the reason for the ship's early departure to a Punctilio reporter. This is also one of the decks patrolled by "enemies" disguised as either passengers or seagulls.

White Jacket Lounge

[edit] Black Guinea Deck & Ringman Deck

According to Brett Helquist's illustration (above), these two decks are on the same level of the ship.

Typee Shuffleboard Court

[edit] Notes

¹ It is demonstrated that V.F.D.'s enemies were unaware of this schedule change because "E." (likely Esmé Squalor) had purchased a ticket for the 8:00 schedule.

² Phase Two refers to phase two of disguise training, Various Finery Disguises, which demonstrates how to disguise oneself using costumes and makeup (Olaf's method as Stephano and countless others).

[edit] The Queequeg

The Queequeg
A Series of Unfortunate Events place

First Visit	The Grim Grotto
Later Visits	The End (mentioned)
Location	unknown
Owned by:	Captain Widdershins
Type	Submarine

The Queequeg is a fictional submarine in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. The vessel has so far only been seen in The Grim Grotto, and was mentioned in The Penultimate Peril as well as The End. The submarine was built by the fire-fighting side of V.F.D., presumably after the schism. The submarine is in disrepair, with reference being made in The Slippery Slope to a firepole being used as a large axle in a submarine.

The boat has a "crew of two" who usually number three: Captain Widdershins, the captain; Fiona Widdershins, chief engineer; and Phil, the cook. Prior to her death, Fiona's mother was the "second" of the crew of two, and the submarine saw numerous replacements for her before Phil's arrival, including the Snicket brothers, Kit Snicket, and a woman who turned out to be a spy. The crew is later joined by Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire. The chief purpose of the submarine is to find the sugar bowl, which had been washed from the V.F.D. headquarters in the Mortmain Mountains out to sea and into the Gorgonian Grotto.

The vessel is named after Queequeg, a character in the novel Moby-Dick, and for this reason, the crew all wear shirts with an image of the face of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick, as a uniform.

After the disappearance of Captain Widdershins and Phil, the Queequeg is captured by the Carmelita (named after Carmelita Spats), an octupus-shaped submarine belonging to Count Olaf. Subsequently, Fiona joins the crew of the Carmelita in order to stay with her brother Fernald. However, she helps the Baudelaires escape and take the submarine to Briny Beach, where they meet Kit Snicket. It is assumed that the submarine was abandoned there. In The Penultimate Peril, Lemony Snicket mentions that, because he misread a group of sausages as spelling a K rather than an R, he caused the loss of 'an important bathyscaphe', possibly referring to the Queequeg.

During The End, it is mentioned that the Queequeg sailed out to sea with Kit Snicket, the Incredibly Deadly Viper, Captain Widdershins, and his stepchildren Fernald and Fiona on board, to find the self-sustaining hot air mobile home where Hector and the Quagmire triplets were living, in order to aid them in a battle against trained eagles. A shipwrecked Kit later tells the Baudelaires that the eagles popped the balloons of Hector's mobile home and the falling wreckage destroyed the Queequeg. There, all but Kit and the viper chose to be taken by the question mark, although it is unknown whether it rescued or destroyed them. Kit states that her brother (although she does not specify which) calls the question mark "The Great Unknown", which is often an euphemism for what comes after death.