Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea of the premiere adventure novels and one of Verne's greatest works, along with "Around the World in Eighty Days" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth". The description of Nemo's ship, the "Nautilus", was considered ahead of its time, as it accurately describes features on submarines, which at the time were very primitive vessels. A model of the French submarine "Plongeur" (launched in 1863) was displayed at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where it was studied by Jules Verne, who used it as an inspiration for the novel. The title refers to the "distance traveled" while under the sea and
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea like D'Urville's ship, the "Astrolabe"; and she passes through an underwater tunnel from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean. The most famous part of the novel, the battle against a school of giant squid, begins when a crewman opens the hatch of the boat and gets caught by one of the monsters. As the tentacle that has grabbed him pulls him away, he yells "Help!" in French. At the beginning of the next chapter, concerning the battle, Aronnax states, "To convey such sights, one would take the pen of our most famous poet, Victor Hugo, author of "The Toilers of