Editing Nautilus (fictional submarine)

{{Short description|Fictional submarine in Jules Verne novels}}
{{redirect|The Nautilus|other ships of the same name|Ships named Nautilus|other uses|Nautilus (disambiguation)}}
{{italic title}}
{{original research|date=August 2012}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2022}}
[[File:Nautilus Neuville.JPG|thumb|''Nautilus'' under way]]
[[File:Nautilus Ile mysterieuse.jpg|thumb|right|''Nautilus'', as pictured in ''[[The Mysterious Island]]'']]
'''''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".<ref>{{cite wikisource |last=Verne |first=Jules |translator=Frederick Paul Walter |title=The Mysterious Island |wslink=The Mysterious Island/Part 3/Chapter 17 |noicon=yes}}</ref> It is designed and commanded by [[Captain Nemo]]. [[Electricity]] provided by [[sodium]]/[[Mercury (element)|mercury]] [[electric battery|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.<ref name="Leagues 12">{{cite wikisource |last=Verne |first=Jules |translator=Frederick Paul Walter |title=20,000 Leagues Under the Seas |wslink=20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (Walter)/Chapter XI |noicon=yes}}</ref>

''Nautilus'' is [[Double hull|double-hulled]],<ref name="Leagues 13">{{cite wikisource |last=Verne |first=Jules |translator=Frederick Paul Walter |title=20,000 Leagues Under the Seas |wslink=20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (Walter)/Chapter 13 |isbn=978-1-4384-3238-0 |noicon=yes}}</ref> and is further separated into water-tight compartments. Its top speed is {{convert|50|mph|kn|order=flip}}.<ref name="Leagues 12" /> In Captain Nemo's own words:

{{cquote|Here, Professor Aronnax, are the different dimensions of this boat now transporting you. It's a very long cylinder with conical ends. It noticeably takes the shape of a cigar, a shape already adopted in London for several projects of the same kind. The length of this cylinder from end to end is exactly seventy meters, and its maximum breadth of beam is eight meters. So it isn't quite built on the ten–to–one ratio of your high–speed steamers; but its lines are sufficiently long, and their tapering gradual enough, so that the displaced water easily slips past and poses no obstacle to the ship's movements. These two dimensions allow you to obtain, via a simple calculation, the surface area and volume of the Nautilus. Its surface area totals 1,011.45 square meters, its volume 1,507.2 cubic meters—which is tantamount to saying that when it's completely submerged, it displaces 1,500 cubic meters of water, or weighs 1,500 metric tons.<ref name="Leagues 13" />}}

''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 "[[Diving plane|hydroplaning]]", in which the vessel dives down at a steep angle.<ref name="Leagues 13" />

''Nautilus'' supports a crew that gathers food from the sea.<ref name="Leagues 10">{{cite wikisource |last=Verne |first=Jules |translator=Frederick Paul Walter |title=20,000 Leagues Under the Seas |wslink=20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (Walter)/Chapter 10 |isbn=978-1-4384-3238-0 |noicon=yes}}</ref> ''Nautilus'' includes a [[galley (kitchen)|galley]] for preparing these foods, which includes a machine that makes drinking water from seawater through [[distillation]].<ref name="Leagues 12" /> ''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.<ref name="Leagues 12" /> ''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.<ref name="Leagues 11">{{cite wikisource |last=Verne |first=Jules |translator=Frederick Paul Walter |title=20,000 Leagues Under the Seas |wslink=20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (Walter)/Chapter 11 |isbn=978-1-4384-3238-0 |noicon=yes}}</ref> ''Nautilus'' also features a lavish dining room<ref name="Leagues 10" /> and even an [[organ (music)|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.<ref name="Leagues 11" /> 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 [[Schneider-Creusot|Creusot]] and [[Société J. F. Cail & Cie|Cail & Co.]] in France, [[John Penn and Sons|Pen & Co.]] and [[ Cammell Laird|Laird]]'s in England, [[Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company|Scott's]] in Scotland, [[Krupp]] in Prussia, the [[Motala Verkstad|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.<ref name="Leagues 13" /> ''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 ==
[[File:Plongeur.jpg|thumb|The ''Plongeur'', inspiration for the ''Nautilus'']]
Verne named the ''Nautilus'' after [[Robert Fulton]]'s real-life submarine [[Nautilus (1800 submarine)|''Nautilus'']] (1800).<ref>{{cite book|last1=Skrabec|first1=Quentin R.|title=The Metallurgic Age: The Victorian Flowering of Invention and Industrial Science|date=2005|publisher=McFarland|location=Jefferson NC|isbn=9781476611136|page=44|edition=revised|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CAwyBgAAQBAJ&q=verne+nautilus+inspiration+fulton&pg=PA44|access-date=23 February 2017}}</ref> For the design of the ''Nautilus'', Verne was inspired by the [[French Navy]] submarine ''[[French submarine Plongeur|Plongeur]]'', a model of which he had seen at the 1867 [[Exposition Universelle (1867)|Exposition Universelle]], three years before writing his novel.<ref>Notice at the Musée de la Marine, [[Rochefort (Charente-Maritime)|Rochefort]]</ref>

A number of authors have identified a possible link between the Birkenhead, England built [[CSS Alabama|CSS ''Alabama'']] and Captain Nemo's ''Nautilus''.<ref name="jules2">{{cite web |title=Jules Verne and the Heroes of Birkenhead. Part 31. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Part One. |url=https://julesverneandtheheroesofbirkenhead.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/31.-Jules-Vernes-Twenty-Thousand-Leagues-Under-the-Sea.-compressed.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220810163051/https://julesverneandtheheroesofbirkenhead.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/31.-Jules-Vernes-Twenty-Thousand-Leagues-Under-the-Sea.-compressed.pdf |archive-date=2022-08-10 |url-status=live |access-date=7 October 2022}}</ref>  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."<ref>William Butcher Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas - Jules Verne - Google Books Explanatory Notes Page 422 {{ISBN|0-19-282839-8}}</ref> 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.<ref>Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas - Jules Verne - Google Books Explanatory Notes Page 422 {{ISBN|0-19-282839-8}}</ref>

==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 [[20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film)|1954 film adaptation]] of the first novel and in ''[[The Return of Captain Nemo]]'', it is suggested that ''Nautilus'' is powered by [[Nuclear power|nuclear energy]] (discovered by Nemo himself), and that Nemo [[Nuclear weapon|uses the same energy to destroy]] Vulcania, ''Nautilus''<nowiki>'</nowiki>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 [[tumblehome]]s 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 (comics)|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 [[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (film)|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|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 ==
<gallery>
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
</gallery>

== See also ==
* [[List of fictional ships]]
* [[List of underwater science fiction works]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
{{Commonscatinline|Nautilus (Jules Verne)|''Nautilus'' (Jules Verne)}}
* Jules Verne's text in ''20,000 Leagues under the Seas'' provides a great deal of information about ''Nautilus'' as discussed on this page: [http://www.vernianera.com/Nautilus/ Jules Verne's ''Nautilus'']. Many artists and ordinary folk have envisioned over the decades their own interpretations of ''Nautilus'': [http://www.vernianera.com/Nautilus/Catalog/ A Catalog of ''Nautilus'' Designs]

{{Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas}}
{{The Mysterious Island}}
{{Jules Verne}}
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[[Category:Fictional elements introduced in 1870]]
[[Category:Fictional submarines]]
[[Category:Jules Verne]]
[[Category:Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas]]