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 not to a "depth", as 20,000 leagues (80,000 km) is nearly twice the circumference of the Earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is four leagues. The book uses metric leagues, which are four kilometres each. During the year 1866, ships of several nations spot a mysterious sea monster, which some suggest to be a giant narwhal. The United States government assembles an expedition in New York City to find and destroy the monster. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine biologist and narrator of the story, who happens to be in New York at the time, receives a last-minute