Narwhal The tusks were staples of the cabinet of curiosities. European knowledge of the tusk's origin developed gradually during the Age of Exploration, as explorers and naturalists began to visit Arctic regions themselves. The narwhal was one of two possible explanations of the giant sea phenomenon written by Jules Verne in his 1870 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". Verne thought that it would be unlikely that there was such a gigantic narwhal in existence. The size of the narwhal, or "unicorn of the sea", as found by Verne, would have been . For the narwhal to have caused the
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Prince Dakkar), it is muddied by the presence of several irreconcilable chronological contradictions between the two books and even within "The Mysterious Island." Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much later "Facing the Flag". That book's main villain, Ker Karraje, is a completely unscrupulous pirate acting purely and simply for gain, completely devoid of all the saving graces which gave Nemo—for all that he, too, was capable of ruthless killings—some nobility of character. Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests—but unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers, Karraje's career of