In Jules Verne’s 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Captain Nemo’s submarine is called Nautilus.
The Nautilus is the fictional electric submarine commanded by Captain Nemo, who takes Professor Pierre Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land on an undersea voyage. The novel was originally published in French in 1870 and became one of the foundational works of science fiction and submarine adventure literature.
Verne imagined the Nautilus as an advanced vessel powered by electricity and capable of extended independent travel beneath the oceans. Its design and technology were fictional, although the novel drew on real nineteenth-century experiments with underwater craft and electrical power.
The name is sometimes confused with real submarines named Nautilus. The U.S. Navy’s USS Nautilus, commissioned in 1954, was the world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine and took its name from Verne’s fictional vessel. Captain Nemo’s submarine is also distinct from the submarine in the 1954 Disney film, whose design adapts the same literary idea.