Boats in A Series of Unfortunate Events

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

The Beatrice

The Beatrice was named after Beatrice, the woman Lemony Snicket dedicates all of his books to. The boat first appeared in The Penultimate Peril when Carmelita Spats was using it in the pool on Hotel Denouement's rooftop salon. At this point the words "The Carmelita" were 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 put the name "The Olaf" on it. 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, washing off the taped names to reveil "The Beatrice." Over a year later, the Baudelaires departed from the island on the boat to civilization.

The Carmelita

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 the Snow Scouts 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 End Count Olaf states that the submarine was stolen by Fernald and Fiona.

The Great Unknown

As shown in its name, not much is known AbOUT The Great Unknown. All that is known is on radar it appears in the shape of a question mark. During The End, it is mentioned that the Queequeg sailed out to sea to find the self-sustaining hot air balloon. Kit tells the Baudelaires the fate of the Quagmires, Hector, Captain Widdershins and his two stepchildren Fernald and Fiona; after reuniting on Hector's float, they are attacked by trained eagles, who pop their balloon and send them hurtling back to the the ruins of the Queequeg. There, they are taken by the mysterious object shaped like a question mark (encountered once before when they were on the Queequeg). The author goes on to call the question mark "The Great Unknown", which is often an euphemism for what comes after death.

The Prospero

In the fictional series A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket, theProsperois 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.

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).

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

(Beverly Cleary has a passage in her novel Ramona Quimby, Age 8, which describes a man very similar to the V.F.D. librarian in Prufrock Preparatory School)

The Ship

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

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

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).

The Queequeg

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-[...], and for this reason, the crew all wear shirts with an image of the face of Herman Melville, author of Moby-[...], 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.

In The End, it is mentioned that the Queequeg sailed out to sea to find the self-sustaining hot air balloon. Kit tells the Baudelaires the fate of the Quagmires, Hector, Captain Widdershins and his two stepchildren Fernald and Fiona; after reuniting on Hector's float, they are attacked by trained eagles, who pop their balloon and send them hurtling back to the the ruins of the Queequeg. There, they are taken by the mysterious object shaped like a question mark (encountered once before when they were on the Queequeg). The author goes on to call the question mark "The Great Unknown", which is often an euphemism for what comes after death.