Nautilus (Verne)

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For other uses see Nautilus (disambiguation)

The Nautilus, as pictured in The Mysterious Island

The Nautilus is the fictional submarine featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874). Verne named the Nautilus after Robert Fulton's real-life submarine Nautilus (1800).

1 Description
2 Appearances
3 Other Verne submarines
4 Images
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Description

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

The Nautilus is double hulled, and is further separated into water-tight compartments. Its top speed is 50 knots. Its displacement is 1356.48 French freight tons immerged (1507 submerged). In Captain Nemo's own words:

“

"Here, M. Aronnax, are the several dimensions of the boat you are in. It is an elongated cylinder with conical ends. It is very like a cigar in shape, a shape already adopted in London in several constructions of the same sort. The length of this cylinder, from stem to stern, is exactly 70 meters, and its maximum breadth is eight meters. It is not built on a ratio of ten to one like your long-voyage steamers, but its lines are sufficiently long, and its curves prolonged enough, to allow the water to slide off easily, and oppose no obstacle to its passage. These two dimensions enable you to obtain by a simple calculation the surface and cubic contents of the Nautilus. Its area measures 1011.45 square meters; and its contents 1,500.2 cubic meters; that is to say, when completely immersed it displaces 1500.2 cubic meters of water, or 1500.2 metric tons.

”

The 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 the Nautilus to believe that the vessel is some species of whale, or perhaps a sea monster not yet known to science. When needed to submerge deeply in short time, Nautilus uses a technique called "hydroplaning" which makes the vessel dive down in warped angles, as found from the talks of Captain Nemo.

The Nautilus supports a crew that gathers and farms food from the sea to eat. The Nautilus includes a galley for preparing these foods, which includes a machine that makes drinking water from seawater through distillation. The Nautilus is able to refresh its air supply, but Captain Nemo prefers to do it by surfacing and exchanging stale air for fresh, much like a whale. The Nautilus is capable of extended voyages without refuelling 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 with boxed collections of valuable oceanic specimens that are unknown to science at the time, expensive paintings, and several collections of jewels. The 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 the Abraham Lincoln is attacked and Ned Land strikes the metallic surface of the Nautilus with his harpoon.

Its parts are built to order in Le Creusot, London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Paris, Prussia (Krupp), Motala Sweden (Motala Verkstad), New York, and other places. Then the pieces are assembled by Nemo's men on a deserted island.

[edit] Appearances

Beside her original appearance in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, the Nautilus also appears in numerous other works:

The comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In the graphic novel, the Nautilus has tentacles that rest along the sides, which can be used to grab objects (such as falling members of the League)and bears the likeness of a Sperm Whale battling a giant Squid. Kevin O'Neill has confirmed that this is in fact intended to be a Nautilus II, built to replace the original of Verne's novels, which sank at the end of The Mysterious Island. The Black Dossier features a map of the Nautilus. In the film adaptation, the Nautilus lacks the tentacles, but is unfeasibly gigantic, has escape pods and is solar powered.
The Japanese anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, by Gainax.
Valhalla Rising, a novel by Clive Cussler
A ship called the Nautilus II appears in the webmanga Captain Nemo
A miniature Nautilus appears in Shadow Hearts: Covenant as Joachim Valentine's most powerful weapon.
The Nautilus can also be seen at Disneyland Paris and Disneysea as separate attractions both being walk-through style rides.
In the MMORPG MapleStory, a submarine is docked at the town of Nautilus Port, where players make the job advancement to the sea-faring Pirate. The town's name is thought to be a reference to Verne's sub.
The Nautilus and Nemo both appear in the Mysterious Islands expansion pack of Pirates of the Spanish Main card game. Both are labeled as Rare (gold logo) cards in the game.
The Nautilus can be downloaded to be played in the game Virtual Sailor

[edit] Other Verne submarines

Besides the Nautilus, other submarines figure in Verne books. In the 1896 novel Facing the Flag the pirate Ker Karraje uses an un-named 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 book The Master of the World Robur's vehicle the Terror has a submarine mode, as well as its automotive, and speedboat and aircraft modes, and briefly eludes naval forces on the Great Lakes by diving.

[edit] Images

Motto of the Nautilus: "mobilis in mobili (moving in a moving thing)"	Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax discussing the plans of the Nautilus	The Grand Salon of the Nautilus	Captain Nemo's room aboard the Nautilus
The library of the Nautilus	Engine room of the Nautilus	Main viewbay of the Nautilus	The silhouette of the Nautilus in the distance (though precisely described in the text, she is never pictured very explicitly in the illustrations)