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20 000 Leagues Under The Sea Nautilus – There are very few fictional submarines that have a place in the navy’s architectural history. The Nautilus, an electrically powered submarine conceived in the 1860s by writer and visionary Jules Verne, stands out. It was a window into the future and possibly an influence on subsequent designs in the real world. I started illustrating the Nautilus after being inspired while drawing a detailed section of the interesting spy submarine USS Halibut for the Covert Shores Book. Additionally, I may have been influenced by some recent Verne-related illustrations I did for another book project by C.E. Davis (The Lunarnauts 1904)
Jules Verne created the submarine for his classic novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In it, the submarine’s troubled captain, Nemo, sets out to take revenge on civilization by ramming and sinking ships. Nemo has sought refuge in the natural environment of the sea, roaming the highly sophisticated Nautilus. Since its release, the submarine has captured the attention of generations of readers and submariners.
20 000 Leagues Under The Sea Nautilus
Exact details of the design are sparse, but it is consistently described as cigar-shaped with pointed ends and 70m long and 8m wide. The forward end is used to ram enemy ships (Verne was writing at the very time when ‘locomotive torpedoes’ were being introduced to the world by the British engineer Robert Whitehead, but Verne makes no reference to this development). The submarine is double-hulled at least part of the way, and driven by a large propeller at the rear.
Stranded On A Reef, The Nautilus Is Attacked By Cannibals …
For dive control, the Nautilus uses large hydroplanes mounted in the center of the buoyancy. It has no rear hydroplane, but does have a rudder. There is no sail as we understand it, but a small retractable pilothouse with viewing ports (this was thirty years before periscopes were introduced to submarines) is used for navigation. A second superstructure further back houses a lamp. The most important feature is the large viewing ports on either side of the spacious saloon which take up the full width of the submarine.
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Verne also thought of divers who used self-contained breathing apparatus with compressed air, almost 80 years before it became a reality!
My design for Nautilus stays with the general description from the book, but includes more features from my own conception. Please forgive the artistic license. In a nod to the real submarine design, I replaced the retractable pilot housing with a fixed structure that would avoid the telescopic interface which I think would leak. I also moved the hydroplanes further forward to just below the pilothouse to simplify the control mechanisms and mounted them lower on the hull so that the axle passes below floor level. Further aft, I kept the problematic sodium-mercury batteries and electromagnetic motor, but opted for twin screws (propellers) to allow for an imaginative fish-like rudder arrangement.
Leagues Under The Sea In Disneyland’s Tomorrowland [closed]
Jules Verne did not invent submarines, but he took the advances of his time and extrapolated them into the (then) submarines of the future. The 1860s were a time of increased interest and effort in submarines. In particular, the Civil War created a climate for submarine development as the Confederate Navy sought unconventional means to neutralize the dominant Northern fleet. The most famous of these was the HL Hunley submarine, but the earlier Pioneer from the same engineers was even closer to the Nautilus. It had a tubular hull with tapered ends. These submarines were small with the propeller driven by hand cranks, but outwardly they resembled the Nautilus and attacked the enemy by ramming (albeit with an explosive ‘torpedo’). – Note, Civil War submarines are covered in the Covert Shores Book.
The Confederate States also developed cigar-shaped semi-submersible boats that allowed steam propulsion, and again attacked using a ram torpedo.
Much larger but less well known was another Confederate submarine designed by a Mr Alstitt. It had a steam engine for surface travel and had two decks, but very little is known of its design
Submarine designed by Captain Siméon Bourgeois and launched in 1863. Unlike Confederate submarines, this one was propelled using compressed air stored in large cylinders that took up most of the hull. Although it ultimately failed, much hope was placed in the design.
Leagues Under The Sea.
Another likely influence was a series of ‘cigar ships’ built by American shipbuilders Winans from 1859 onwards. Although not submersible, their spindly hulls resembled the description of the Nautilus. Their concept was a fully enclosed corrugated hull with minimal superstructure. They also boasted various unusual propeller configurations, including a central shroud propeller and twin props mounted on both ends of the hull. Finding limited interest in America, they moved the business to Europe with one boat built in Russia and another in France. And they were all over the press at the time, albeit mostly seen as an expensive folly.
The Nautilus differed from all these submarines in one important aspect; progress. Verne envisioned an electrically powered submarine. The means of harnessing electricity were relatively technological, and Vernes overcame the problem of charging the batteries by imagining a sodium-mercury compound that could be replenished from salt extracted from seawater. This was not scientifically sound, but by accepting this solution to the then apparently insurmountable problem of battery life, Vernes projected the future of electrically powered submarines. The electric motor described was another scientific improbability, using opposing electromagnets as pistons, but again this does not detract from his foresight.
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The popular image of the Nautilus submarine is actually the creation of Disney for the 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It is an interesting design, but quite different from Verne’s description. Recently, Herve Jaubert, a French-born submarine designer built a similar-looking private submarine for wealthy clients. What ties it to this site is that Jaubert is also an SDV maker, although some of his designs remain secret (again, a Covert Shores Covert Shores Book plug!). This article needs more citations for verification. Help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find Sources: “Les Mystères du Nautilus” – News · Newspapers · Books · Scholar · JSTOR (January 2023 ) (Find out how and what to remove this template message)
Leagues Under The Sea
Les Mystères du Nautilus (French for “The Mysteries of the Nautilus”) is a walk-through attraction at Disneyland Paris in France. It is an updated version of the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea walkthrough attraction that was at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA in the early 1950s, based on the movie of the same name. This attraction takes guests through the different rooms of Captain Nemo’s submarine, especially those in the movie. It opened on 4 July 1994.
The submarine is located in a lagoon near Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain. Guests see what appears to be a lighthouse and proceed into the attraction through an underwater corridor. Although guests may think they are visiting the submarine in the lagoon, the “underwater tunnel” leads them into a show building hidden by tall grass bushes. The winding staircase into the attraction helps to distract guests so they don’t realize this.
Originally, a larger version of this walkthrough was intended, with more rooms and possibly an underwater restaurant. It was supposed to be part of the never-built Discovery Mountain project, which was shelved when Disneyland Paris had financial problems.
The octopus attack was more developed in 1994. It began with the organ playing Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D minor, and with Nemo’s short speech about his sea kingdom. Then the window opened so that the guests could see the depths of the sea, until a giant ceiling hit the glass. Captain Nemo gave the order to close the window, and tried to free the submarine from the octopus’s grip. Nevertheless, bursts of water from the roof reached the audience, and the gases eventually collapsed. Finally, when the window opened again, the guests could see the whole monster. Electric zaps hit it, but it wouldn’t release the sub until the zaps got stronger. Due to technical problems, this series was shortened.
Nautilus Walt Disney 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Submarine
Disney Imagineer Tom Sherman, who did many sketches and designed Nautilus models, was given the name “Admiral of the Nautilus” before the opening. Tim Delaney stated that for him it was “a dream come true.”
The attraction is also a priest at Tokyo DisneySea. However, only a decorative exterior piece is on display, lacking the interior counterpart seen at Disneyland Paris. The area is now used as a meet-and-greet venue with Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy in steampunk costumes. The main character in the novel is the one who says nothing, but lives and breathes like the living organisms it contains; Nautilus.
Verne named Nautilus after Robert Fulton’s submarine Nautilus from 1800. Before writing Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Seas, Jules
