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
USS Nautilus (SSN-571) "Balao"-, and "Tench"-class submarines. "Nautilus"s keel was laid at General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division in Groton, Connecticut by Harry S. Truman on 14 June 1952. She was christened on 21 January 1954 and launched into the Thames River, sponsored by Mamie Eisenhower. "Nautilus" was commissioned on 30 September 1954, under the command of Commander Eugene P. Wilkinson, USN. "Nautilus" was powered by the Submarine Thermal Reactor (STR), later redesignated the S2W reactor, a pressurized water reactor produced for the US Navy by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, operated by Westinghouse, developed the basic reactor plant design used in