Nautilus (Verne) from seawater) is the craft's primary power source for propulsion and other services. "Nautilus" is double-hulled, and is further separated into water-tight compartments. Its top speed is . Its displacement is submerged. In Captain Nemo's own words: "Nautilus" uses floodable tanks in order to adjust buoyancy and so control its depth. The pumps that evacuate these tanks of water are so powerful that they produce large jets of water when the vessel emerges rapidly from the surface of the water. This leads many early observers of "Nautilus" to believe that the vessel is some species of whale, or perhaps a
Jules Verne Quai Jean-Bart, where Verne's brother Paul was born the same year. Three sisters, Anna (1836), Mathilde (1839), and Marie (1842) would follow. In 1834, at the age of six, Verne was sent to boarding school at 5 Place du Bouffay in Nantes. The teacher, Mme Sambin, was the widow of a naval captain who had disappeared some 30 years before. Mme Sambin often told the students that her husband was a shipwrecked castaway and that he would eventually return like Robinson Crusoe from his desert island paradise. The theme of the Robinsonade would stay with Verne throughout his life and