The incident of Jean Valjean's heroic rescue of the sailor is taken from a friend's eyewitness account of a similar rescue by a convict that actually took place at Toulon. Writers of the Realistic school frequently took material from contemporary events—Flaubert's Madame Bovary, for instance, is based on a newspaper account of the suicide of a country doctor's wife—and Hugo in this chapter uses fake newspaper reports to give "authenticity" to his account.
In fact, the use of newspaper reports, false or true, in a novel does not necessarily add conviction. No amount of "real life" stuffing will save a novel that is not artistically and psychologically sound. But where the novel is otherwise satisfying, such devices do add powerfully to the illusion of authenticity.
Criminals sent to the galleys, as every reader of historical fiction knows, were used as oarsmen on those wooden men-of-war, which, though they had sails, needed oar power to maneuver in a calm or in a crisis. The prisoners were exposed to every inclemency of weather and, chained to their benches, often went down with the ship. However, since such ships were outmoded early in the eighteenth century, it may surprise the reader to find Jean Valjean on one in 1823. In fact, the "galériens" no longer ply the oars, but work for the navy shifting stores and repairing vessels at navy yards in Marseilles, Toulon, Rochefort, and Brest; and they sleep at night in shore prisons.
