Nautilus (Verne)

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"The Nautilus" redirects here. For the journal about molluscs, see The Nautilus (journal). For other ships of the same name, see Ships named Nautilus.
The Nautilus under way.
The Nautilus, as pictured in The Mysterious Island.

The Nautilus is the fictional submarine captained by Nemo 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)[citation needed]. Three years before writing his novel, Jules Verne also studied a model of the newly developed French Navy submarine Plongeur at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, which inspired him for his definition of the Nautilus.[1][better source needed]


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 1,356.48 French freight tons emerged (1,507 submerged). In Captain Nemo's own words:





Its parts are built to order in France, the United Kingdom, Prussia, Sweden, the United States and elsewhere. Then they are assembled by Nemo's men on a desert island. The Nautilus most likely returned to this island and later helped castaways in the novel The Mysterious Island. After Nemo dies on board, the volcanic island erupts, entombing the Captain and the Nautilus for eternity.


The Nautilus from the 1954 film.

Beside her original appearance in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, the Nautilus and Captain Nemo have appeared in numerous other works.

  • In the 1954 film and The Return of Captain Nemo, it is suggested that the Nautilus is powered by nuclear energy. This version also appears in the video game Epic Mickey, under the name of Notilus.
  • In Kevin J. Anderson's Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius, the Nautilus appears as a real submarine, apparently cigar-shaped like the one from the novel, built by Nemo for the Ottoman Empire.
  • In the book Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen. Nemo and the Nautilus, which is also called the Yellow Dragon, both appear.
  • In Valhalla Rising, by Clive Cussler, Nemo and the Nautilus are discovered by a researcher and stored in a hidden cave as his private research lab. Its propulsion in the novel is described as a Magneto-hydrodynamic drive.
  • In Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, a steampunk-themed anime set in 1889, the Nautilus is an ancient Atlantean war machine. It is approximately 150 meters in length and filled with scientific marvels, such as electricity, indoor plumbing and a "particle annihilation engine" as its power source.
  • In Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, the main characters locate the Nautilus and use it to escape the sinking island, kick-starting its dead batteries with power from a massive electric eel.
  • In the 1969 movie Captain Nemo and the Underwater City the 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 are mounted twin rudders and diving planes.


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

Other Verne submarines[edit]

Besides the Nautilus, other submarines do feature in Jules Verne novels. In the 1896 novel Facing the Flag the pirate Ker Karraje uses an unnamed submarine that acts both as a tug to his schooner The 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 secondary vehicle, which is called the Terror, is a strange flying machine that has a submarine mode, as well as an automobile and speedboat mode. It briefly eludes naval forces on the Great Lakes by diving.



  1. ^ Notice at the Musée de la Marine, Rochefort

See also[edit]