Nautilus (Verne)

''Nautilus'' is the fictional submarine belonging to Captain Nemo featured in Jules Verne's novels ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' (1870) and '' The Mysterious Island'' (1875).

Description

''Nautilus'' is described by Verne as "a masterpiece containing masterpieces". It is designed and commanded by Captain Nemo. Electricity provided by sodium/ mercury electric batteries (with the sodium provided by extraction from seawater) is the craft's primary power source for propulsion and other services. The energy needed to extract the sodium is provided by coal mined from the sea floor.

''Nautilus'' is double-hulled, and is further separated into water-tight compartments. Its top speed is . In Captain Nemo's own words:

''Nautilus'' uses floodable tanks in order to adjust buoyancy and so control its depth. The pumps that evacuate these tanks of water are so powerful that they produce large jets of water when the vessel emerges rapidly from the surface of the water. This leads many early observers of ''Nautilus'' to believe that the vessel is some species of marine mammal, or perhaps a sea monster not yet known to science. To submerge deeply in a short time, ''Nautilus'' uses a technique called " hydroplaning", in which the vessel dives down at a steep angle.

''Nautilus'' supports a crew that gathers food from the sea. ''Nautilus'' includes a galley for preparing these foods, which includes a machine that makes drinking water from seawater through distillation. ''Nautilus'' is not able to refresh its air supply, so Captain Nemo designed it to do this by surfacing and exchanging stale air for fresh, much like a whale. ''Nautilus'' is capable of extended voyages without refueling or otherwise restocking supplies. Its maximum dive time is around five days.

Much of the ship is decorated to standards of luxury that are unequalled in a seagoing vessel of the time. These include a library containing about twelve thousand books, with boxed collections of valuable oceanic specimens. The library is also filled with expensive paintings and other works of art. ''Nautilus'' also features a lavish dining room and even an organ that Captain Nemo uses to entertain himself in the evening. By comparison, Nemo's personal quarters are very sparsely furnished but do feature duplicates of the bridge instruments so that the captain can keep track of the vessel without being present on the bridge. These amenities however, are only available to Nemo, Professor Aronnax, and his companions.

From her attacks on ships, using a ramming prow to puncture target vessels below the waterline, the world thinks it a sea monster, but later identifies it as an underwater vessel capable of great destructive power, after ''Abraham Lincoln'' is attacked and Ned Land strikes the metallic surface of ''Nautilus'' with his harpoon.

Its parts were built to order by companies including Creusot and Cail & Co. in France, Pen & Co. and Laird's in England, Scott's in Scotland, Krupp in Prussia, the Motala workshops in Sweden, and Hart Bros. in the United States. Each part was ordered by Nemo anonymously under a different address. Then they were assembled by Nemo's men on a desert island. ''Nautilus'' returned to this island, where Nemo later helped castaways in the novel '' The Mysterious Island''. After Nemo dies on board, the volcanic island erupts, entombing the Captain and ''Nautilus'' for eternity.

Inspirations

Verne named the ''Nautilus'' after Robert Fulton's real-life submarine ''Nautilus'' (1800). For the design of the ''Nautilus'', Verne was inspired by the French Navy submarine '' Plongeur'', a model of which he had seen at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, three years before writing his novel.

A number of authors have identified a possible link between the Birkenhead, England built CSS ''Alabama'' and Captain Nemo's ''Nautilus''. The CSS ''Alabama'' was a warship built in secrecy for the Confederate States by Lairds shipyard of Birkenhead, England in the American Civil War. Butcher stated, "The ''Alabama'', which claimed to have sunk 75 merchantmen, was destroyed by the Unionist ''Kearsarge'' off Cherbourg on 11 June 1864... This battle has clear connections with Nemo's final attack, also in the English Channel." Jules Verne had himself made a previous comparison between the Birkenhead built CSS ''Alabama'' and the ''Nautilus'' in a letter to his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel in March 1869.Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas - Jules Verne - Google Books Explanatory Notes Page 422

Other appearances

Beside their original appearances in ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' and '' The Mysterious Island'', ''Nautilus'' and Captain Nemo have appeared in numerous other works.

In the 1954 film adaptation of the first novel and in '' The Return of Captain Nemo'', it is suggested that ''Nautilus'' is powered by nuclear energy (discovered by Nemo himself), and that Nemo uses the same energy to destroy Vulcania, ''Nautilus'''s base island.

In the 1969 film '' Captain Nemo and the Underwater City'', ''Nautilus'' and its sister ship ''Nautilus II'' are depicted as industrialised stingray-like vessels, flattened with pronounced tumblehomes supporting rounded deckhouses. Each has a heavy girderwork tail, at the tip of which twin rudders and diving planes are mounted.

In Kevin J. Anderson's '' Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius'', ''Nautilus'' appears as a real submarine, apparently cigar-shaped like the one from the novel, built by Nemo for the Ottoman Empire.

In Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's '' The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'', ''Nautilus'' features with a squid-like appearance in the graphic novel and a more traditional – albeit extremely tall – submarine in the film. Toward the closing stages of the film, antagonist "The Fantom" has stolen Nemo's design and begun construction of multiple submarines dubbed "Nautili" by Skinner. In the film adaptation, the ''Nautilus'' is called the sword of the ocean by Nemo.

The ''Nautilus'' appears in Rick Riordan's 2021 novel '' Daughter of the Deep''. This novel is a continuation of ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'', taking place over a century later and featuring a descendant of Captain Nemo as a main character.

Other Verne submarines

Submarines feature in some other of Verne's works. In the 1896 novel '' Facing the Flag'', the pirate Ker Karraje uses an unnamed submarine that acts both as a tug to his schooner ''Ebba'' and for ramming and destroying ships which are the targets of his piracy. The same book also features HMS ''Sword'', a small Royal Navy experimental submarine which is sunk after a valiant but unequal struggle with the pirate submarine. In the 1904 book '' The Master of the World'', Robur's secondary vehicle, ''Terror'', is a strange flying machine with submarine, automobile and speedboat capabilities. It briefly eludes naval forces on the Great Lakes by diving.

Images

File:20000 Nemo Aronnax plans.jpg, Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax discussing the plans of ''Nautilus''
File:20000 Nautilus Salon.jpg, The Grand Salon of ''Nautilus''
File:20000 Nautilus Nemo room.jpg, Captain Nemo's room aboard ''Nautilus''
File:20000 Nautilus Library Nemo Aronnax.jpg, The library of ''Nautilus''
File:20000 Nautilus engines.jpg, Engine room of ''Nautilus''
File:Nemo Aronax viewbay diver.jpg, Main window of ''Nautilus''
File:Nautilus wrecks.jpg, The silhouette of ''Nautilus'' in the distance

See also

* List of fictional ships
* List of underwater science fiction works

Notes

External links

* Jules Verne's text in ''20,000 Leagues under the Seas'' provides a great deal of information about ''Nautilus'' as discussed on this page
Jules Verne's ''Nautilus''
Many artists and ordinary folk have envisioned over the decades their own interpretations of ''Nautilus''
A Catalog of ''Nautilus'' Designs

{{Authority control
Fictional elements introduced in 1870
Fictional submarines
Jules Verne
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas