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
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