French corvette Alecton off "lest the creature damage or injure the ship and the crew", but in an interview Roper laments "How dangerous is a giant squid full of cannon balls going to be?" The "Alecton" encounter was the inspiration for the giant squids attacking the submarine in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne, published in 1870. Notes References French corvette Alecton The French corvette Alecton was a ship in the French Navy in the 19th century. She is most famous for being one of the first surface vessels recorded to have encountered
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who is known to be responsible for many serious changes in Verne's books. In the original text the mysterious captain was a Polish nobleman, avenging his family who were killed by the Russians in retaliation for the captain's taking part in the Polish January Uprising of 1863. As France was at the time allied with the Russian Empire, the target for Nemo's wrath was changed to France's old enemy, the British Empire, to avoid political trouble. Professor Pierre Aronnax does not suspect Nemo's origins, as these were explained only later, in Verne's next book. What remained in