Nautilus (Verne) Nautilus (Verne) 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). For the design of the "Nautilus" Verne was inspired by the French Navy submarine "Plongeur", a model of which he had seen at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, three years before writing his novel. "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
Captain Nemo Phileas Fogg". "Nemo" is Latin for "no one". "Nemo" is, moreover, the Latin rendering of Ancient Greek "Outis" ("Nobody"), the pseudonym adopted by Odysseus, in Greek mythology—a ruse employed to outwit the cyclops Polyphemus. This appears to be the intended meaning, since in "The Mysterious Island", when addressed by Cyrus Harding as Captain Nemo, he replies, "I have no name!" Nothing concerning his past is revealed in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", except his dislike of imperialism (and of British imperial society more generally) and the apparent loss of his family in the past. In "The Mysterious Island", Captain