Jules Verne writes to his publisher Etzel:

It is necessary that my unknown person should not have the slightest contact with the rest of humanity, from which he is completely separated. He does not live on the earth, he does without the earth. The sea is enough for him, but the sea needs to give him everything, including clothes and food. He never sets foot on any continent...

The writer decided to place his hero in the depths of the ocean, and for this he needed a submarine ship. This is how the image of the future Nautilus began to take shape. In the 1860s, submarines were already quite well known, they were built in a number of countries and the writer knew quite well about them. So, back in 1862, he saw it being built “In 1867, having returned to Paris after a trip to the USA, Verne visited the World Exhibition on the Champ de Mars, where the “Fairy of Electricity”, the project for the future Suez Canal, as well as the technology of the first submarines and spacesuits, many of which the writer later introduced on his fantastic underwater ship.

It is difficult to determine exactly which submarine served as the final prototype of the Nautilus. So, in appearance it is very similar to the American submarine “Alligator”, launched in 1862. However, in terms of internal equipment, Nautilus is closest to the French "

Model "Paris"

It is widely believed that the Nautilus was named after the boat of the same name by Robert Fulton, which he demonstrated to Parisians on the Seine in May 1801. However, in his works, Verne, born in 1828, never mentions his name, especially since Fulton offered his submarines not only to France, but also to its potential enemy - England. Thus, Verne had no reason to name a fictional submarine after a real one. Moreover, the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea describes an episode when the passengers of the Nautilus observe a school of nautilus mollusks (in the novel they are called Argonauts) and compare the mollusks and their shells with Captain Nemo and his ship. The same episode reveals the meaning of the Nautilus motto - “Mobilis in mobile”.

"Nautilus" in the literary works of Jules Verne

Creation

Design

Internal layout

The salon is separated from them by a waterproof bulkhead. This is a spacious hall, 10 meters long, 6 wide and 5 high. Behind the patterned ceiling, designed in the spirit of Moorish vaulted roofs, powerful lighting lamps are hidden. Captain Nemo has set up a real museum of art and gifts of nature here. The walls are covered with woven wallpaper of a strict pattern. About 30 paintings in identical frames, separated from one another by shields with knight's armor, adorn the walls. Among the masters represented: Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Titian, Veronese, Murillo, Holbein, Diego Velazquez, Ribeira, Rubens, Teniers, Gerard Dou, Metsu, Paul Potter, Gericault, Prudhon, Backhuysen, Berne, Delacroix, Enger, De Camp, Troyon, Meissonnier, Daubigny, while the works of newfangled masters of that time like the Impressionists are absent. The entire wall between the doors is occupied by a huge harmonium, on which scores of Weber, Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Herold, Wagner, Auber, Gounod and many others are scattered. In the corners, on high pedestals, there are several marble and bronze copies of ancient sculptures. Next to works of art are creations of nature, represented by algae, shells and other gifts of ocean fauna and flora. In the middle of the salon, a fountain gushes from a giant tridacna, illuminated from below by electricity. The edges of the shell are gracefully jagged, and its diameter is about 2 meters. Around the shells in elegant display cases framed in copper, the rarest exhibits of oceanic waters are arranged by class and labeled.

Next to the salon and the second waterproof partition there is a library room (also known as a smoking room) about five meters long. Along the walls of the room there are bookcases made of black rosewood with bronze inlays, occupying the entire space from floor to ceiling. Slightly away from the cabinets, there are solid wide sofas upholstered in brown leather, and light mobile book stands are placed near the sofas. There is a large table in the middle of the library. There are 4 frosted glass lamps on the ceiling, and the ceiling itself is decorated with stucco. The Nautilus library has 20 thousand volumes.

Behind the third watertight bulkhead there is a small room in which a ladder leading to the boat is installed. Next comes another cabin 2 meters long (the professor’s friends lived in it - his servant Conseil and harpooner Ned Land), followed by a galley 3 meters long, located between two spacious pantries. Near the galley there is a comfortable bathroom with taps for hot and cold water. Afterwards there is a sailor's cabin 5 meters long.

The fourth waterproof bulkhead separates the cockpit from the engine room, which is about twenty meters long and brightly lit. The room consists of two halves: the first contains batteries that generate electrical energy, the second contains machines that rotate the ship's propeller.

If we consider only the cost of the hull and equipment, then the Nautilus at the time of its creation cost about two million francs, and taking into account the collections and works of art stored in it, at least four or five million francs.

"Nautilus" in "20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"

The Nautilus appears on the very first pages of the novel and almost immediately shows its incredible sailing performance, overtaking all existing steamships. At first, everyone thinks that this is an animal: it is mistaken either for a giant cetacean (narwhal) or for a giant squid. Soon, by chance, three passengers get on board - Professor Aronnax, his servant Conseil and harpooner Ned Land. They also learn the name of the ship, and the Nautilus soon shows them its capabilities.

So thanks to him, the heroes were able to see the life of the depths of the sea.

The depths of the sea were magnificently illuminated within a radius of one mile from the Nautilus. A wonderful sight! What a pen is worthy to describe it! What brush is capable of depicting all the tenderness of the colorful range, the play of light rays in transparent sea waters, starting from the deepest layers to the surface of the ocean!

Subsequently, the author more than once describes his admiration for the inhabitants of the depths in their natural environment. In the Sargasso Sea, the Nautilus dives to a depth of 16 kilometers without any damage.

The Nautilus slid into the bottomless depths, despite the enormous pressure of the external environment. I felt how the iron cladding of the ship creaked, how the struts bent, how the bulkheads trembled, how the glass in the salon windows seemed to bend inward under the pressure of the water. If our ship did not have the resistance of steel, as its commander said, it would, of course, be flattened!

Afterwards, the heroes on the Nautilus make a trip under the ice to the south pole, on the site of which there is a small island, and Nemo plants his flag at the pole.

The Nautilus helped its captain make many discoveries; it was thanks to him that Nemo opened a tunnel under the Isthmus of Suez, revealed the mystery of the death of La Perouse, was able to explore a number of underwater caves and found Atlantis.

At the same time, the Nautilus shows itself as a warship. Already at the beginning of the novel, his accidental collision with a passenger ship is mentioned, when the ram pierced five-centimeter steel with such ease that on the ship it was felt only as a slight jolt. After this incident, newspapers begin to blame the “giant narwhal” (for which the Nautilus was initially mistaken) for the death of every missing ship. But only from the second half of the novel, Aronnax and his companions were able to see with their own eyes the combat capabilities of the ship. The first combat use of the Nautilus described in the novel is very unusual: Nemo uses it to destroy a school of sperm whales.

Nautilus on the attack

Well, there was a battle! Even Ned Land was delighted and clapped his hands. The Nautilus in the hands of the captain turned into a formidable harpoon. He cut into these fleshy carcasses and cut them in half, leaving behind two bloody pieces of meat. The terrible blows of the tail on its casing were not sensitive to him. The pushes of powerful carcasses - he doesn’t care! Having destroyed one sperm whale, he rushed to another, turned from tack to tack so as not to miss the victim, gave first forward, then reverse, plunged, obedient to the will of the navigator, into the depths when the animal went under water, floated after him to the surface of the ocean , went into a frontal attack or struck from the flank, attacked from the front, from the rear, chopped, cut with his terrible tusk!

What a massacre there was! What a noise there was over the ocean waters! What a piercing whistle, what a death rattle escaped from the throats of the maddened animals! Agitated by the blows of the mighty tails, the calm ocean waters seethed as if in a cauldron!

This Homeric massacre went on for a whole hour, where there was no mercy for the big heads. Several times, united in groups of ten to twelve individuals, sperm whales went on the offensive, trying to crush the ship with their carcasses. The gaping toothy mouths and the terrible eyes of the animals darting about on the other side of the windows infuriated Ned Land. He showered the big-headed men with curses and shook his fist at them. Sperm whales dug their teeth into the iron plating of a submarine ship, like dogs dig into the throat of a hunted boar. But the Nautilus, by the will of the helmsman, either carried them along with it into the depths, or brought them to the surface of the waters, despite the enormous weight and powerful grip of the animals.

Also, the “Nautilus” shows itself as a “weapon of retaliation”, and if in one of the chapters it is only hinted at its battle with the frigate (in this case one of the sailors is mortally wounded), then towards the end of the novel it is described in detail how it drowns the military attacking it ship.

Meanwhile, the speed of the Nautilus increased noticeably. So he took a running start. His entire body shook. And suddenly I screamed: the Nautilus struck, but not as strong as one might have expected. I felt the piercing movement of a steel tusk. I heard clanging and grinding. The Nautilus, thanks to the powerful force of its forward thrust, passed through the ship's hull as easily as a sailmaker's needle through canvas.

At the end of the novel, in the process of escaping the passengers, the Nautilus falls into a huge whirlpool - the Maelstrom, but, as it later turns out in the novel “The Mysterious Island”, it managed to get out of it.

Last Harbor

Over time, all of Nemo's companions died and the captain, who turned 60 years old, was left alone with his ship. He took the Nautilus to one of the harbors that sometimes served as his anchorage. This harbor was located under Lincoln Island. Six years later, when a balloon carrying travelers from the United States crashed on the island, Nemo tried to sail away, but it turned out that under the influence of volcanic forces the basalt rock had risen, and the ship could not leave the underwater cave. The Nautilus was locked up. A few years later, Nemo, sensing his demise, called the colonists by telegraph to the Nautilus. After speaking with them, he made his final request to them:

...I want the Nautilus to be my grave. This will be my coffin. All my friends lie at the bottom of the sea, and I want to lie there too.

The colonists promised to fulfill his request and after Nemo’s death, they tightly closed all the doors and hatches on the Nautilus, after which they opened both purge valves at the stern. On October 16, 1868, in the Dakkar cave, the Nautilus sank under water forever, and on March 9, 1869, after a prolonged eruption of Mount Franklin, the walls of the cave collapsed and the mountain and a significant part of the island were destroyed from the water gushing into the mouth of the volcano. The Nautilus was finally buried under debris.

Inaccuracies and absurdities in the description of the ship

Juulverne's description of the Nautilus contains a number of inaccuracies. For example, it is impossible to accurately determine the year the ship was built, since the dates are mixed up in both novels. So in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (the action takes place in 1868), Professor Aronnax finds in the ship’s library a book by Joseph Bertrand “Principles of Astronomy”, published in 1865, from which he concludes that the Nautilus was built no earlier than 1865 . In the novel “The Mysterious Island,” a balloon with fugitives crashes in 1865, and by that time Nemo had already spent 6 years on the island. It turns out that the Nautilus was laid up already in 1859, and in 1865 it was locked in a cave. Also in the novel "The Mysterious Island" it is indicated that the Nautilus was built after the end of the Sepoy Mutiny, that is, not earlier than 1859. It follows from this that the ship sailed in the ocean for less than a year, and Nemo himself spent only 9 years on it, which is much less than the 30 years that engineer Cyrus Smith called it.

Among the technical inaccuracies and obvious miscalculations, the following can be mentioned:

"Nautilus" in the works of other authors

In 1993-2002 V. Hohlbein published a series of books under the general title “Children of Captain Nemo” (another name is “Operation Nautilus”). The novels are set in 1916, during the First World War, and the main character is the young son of the Prince of Dakkar named Michael. The main action takes place on board the Nautilus, but the ship itself, judging by the rare mentions of its design, differs in many ways from the ship from the novels of J. Verne. Thus, Holbein’s Nautilus is equipped with a periscope, which did not yet exist in 1869, a searchlight is placed on the bow of the ship, and internal combustion engines are used as engines (fuel supply pumps are mentioned more than once in the novel). In total, the series includes 12 books, the first of which (“Abandoned Island”, “Girl from Atlantis”) have already been translated into Russian.

Other submarines in the works of Jules Verne

After “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Mysterious Island” (1875), J. Verne did not return to submarines for quite some time. Finally, in 1896, the novel “Flag of the Motherland” was published, which featured a submarine. Like the Nautilus, its main weapon is a ram, but it is much smaller in size, equipped with a periscope, and its source of electricity is batteries. There is no more detailed description of the submarine in the novel. It is not commanded by a noble captain, like Nemo, but by Ker Karraje, a villain who uses the submarine for pirate attacks on ships. Later in the novel, another submarine, the Sword, appears for a while, and then follows a description of the battle between two submarines, which ends in the defeat of the Sword. At the end of the novel, Ker Carrage and his submarine (which is not called anything other than a “tug”) die.

Both novels were published in large quantities and translated into many languages ​​of the world, but they never reached the popularity of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Mysterious Island,” and “Terrible” remained just one of the writer’s fictions.

"Nautilus" on the screen

It must be said that in a number of the films listed above, “Nautilus” has practically nothing in common with the description of Jules Verne. For example, in 2007, the film “30,000 Leagues Under the Sea” was released, where “Nautilus” is a fantastic submarine of enormous size, outwardly more similar to the Soviet submarine Project 941. The situation is approximately the same in the above-mentioned film “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (2003), where the “Nautilus” in appearance strongly resembles a colossal nuclear submarine, is capable of developing enormous speed and is armed with ballistic missiles.

Also, a ship named “Nautilus” appears in the TV series “Star Trek: Voyager” in the episode “Year to hell” (episodes 8 and 9 of season 4).

• "Brandy's Family on Mysterious Island" (1972)
• "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1972, 1975, 2002)
• "Mysterious Island" (1975, 2001)
• "The Underwater Adventures of Captain Nemo" (1975)
• "The Great Sea Battle: 20,000 Miles of Love" (1981)
• "Damu Toraburu Tondekeman" (1990)
• "Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water" (1990-1991)
• "Willy Fog 2" (1993)
• "Space Strikers" (1995)
• "Johnny Bravo" (2000)

"Nautilus" in computer and video games

There is a modification of the game “Far Cry” called “Mysterious Island” based on the novel of the same name by Jules Verne.

It is noteworthy that in the game “Mechanoids 2: War of the Clans”, published in 2006, a mechanoid named Nautilus appears. However, the player will never see the Nautilus itself.

Nautilus and reality

Initially, the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” was supposed to be called “Captain Nemo”, since the main emphasis in it was on the image of the captain, but after J. Verne changed the name, and this played in favor of “Nautilus”. So the name itself draws in the readers’ subconscious images of the depths of the sea, the ship itself, and only then the captain. Thanks to this, as well as the high popularity of the novel, the Nautilus became one of the most famous submarines in the world.

"Nautilus" and real submarines

The length of the Nautilus was 70 meters, the maximum width was 8 meters, and the displacement was one and a half thousand tons. His main weapon is a steel ram of enormous hardness, capable of breaking through the hull of any ship. It was capable of descending to a depth of 16 thousand meters and accelerating underwater to 50 knots. And this was at a time when real submarines could move underwater at a speed of no more than 5 knots and dive to a depth of no more than 25 meters. In addition, none of the real submarines built or just conceived in the drawings had such a powerful, practically inexhaustible “fuel” with which the Nautilus was supplied - electricity. Electricity provides everything to the ship: it rotates the propeller and drives compressors, illuminates the depths of the ocean and the interior, allows you to cook food and obtain distilled water. The design of the ship includes all the basic elements of submarines, it uses the most modern, at that time, ideas and developments, and the method of diving using horizontal rudders is widely used by all modern submarines. The Nautilus even managed to get out of a huge whirlpool, and its reliability is evidenced by the fact that throughout the entire novel no technical problems are ever mentioned. For its time, the Nautilus was an ideal submarine ship. Nemo even allowed himself to remark:

...in the field of shipbuilding, our contemporaries are not far from the ancients. It took several centuries to discover the mechanical power of steam! Who knows whether even in a hundred years a second Nautilus will appear! Progress moves slowly, Mr. Aronnax!

To which Aronnax replied:

Absolutely right, your ship is ahead of its era by a century, if not centuries!

However, soon after the novel was published, progress in the development of the submarine fleet began to pick up speed. The production of submarines increased, and their design began to improve more and more. Already in 1886, a submarine with an electric engine was launched in England, which was named in honor of Captain Nemo's ship - “Nautilus”. In June 1904, Verne's article "The Future of the Submarine" was published in the magazine "Popular Mechanics", where he argued that the future belonged to mini-submarines, as it would find super-powerful sources of electricity for submarine liners and build a large vessel capable of withstanding pressure at significant depths. were, in the writer’s opinion, impossible tasks.

In the future, boats will be smaller than today and will be operated by one or two people.

The inability of submarines to sink to the ocean floor is more than compensated for by bathyscaphes. So on January 23, 1960, 92 years after the Nautilus dive, Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh (English) on the Trieste bathyscaphe made a record dive to a depth of 11 kilometers into the Mariana Trench and discovered highly organized life there .

Modern submarines are dozens of times larger in displacement than Verne's Nautilus, in speed they have almost caught up with it (the speed record among submarines is 44.7 knots, set by Soviet nuclear submarines of Project 661), and their crew is more than a hundred people. They also have equipment and weapons that Verne could not even dream of (or refused for one reason or another to equip the Nautilus with them): periscope, sonar, air regeneration units, satellite communications, torpedoes, ballistic missiles and much, much more. . If in - years. The design of the Nautilus was considered fantastic, but after a little more than a century it turned out to be obsolete.

However, its design is still popular and is used in the tourism business. So in 2006, at an exhibition in Dubai, the Exomos company presented the Nautilus submarine project. The appearance of the submarine is as close as possible to the literary prototype. Its passenger capacity is 10 people, and its maximum diving depth is 30 meters. The cost of the submarine is $3 million.

"Nautilus" in culture

The Nautilus could have turned out to be an ordinary fantasy machine from a novel, if not for Captain Nemo. Nemo was originally conceived as a Polish revolutionary sinking Russian ships in cold blood, and the Nautilus was a killing machine. However, Etzel was against such a character and forced the writer to completely remake him. As a result, Nemo changed from a Pole to a Hindu, from a murderer-avenger to a rebel, a fighter against aggression, and also a marine scientist. Over time, many of the qualities of Captain Nemo began to be unwittingly assigned to his ship. The Nautilus ceased to be a killing machine and began to be considered not only a high-speed submarine, which is subject to all the depths, but also a weapon of retaliation, a research laboratory and the underwater abode of a hermit. With his help, Nemo not only sank the ships of the aggressors, but also helped the oppressed, and also studied underwater life. The famous maritime explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau often compared himself with the heroes of the novel:

"Nautilus" was for its time a perfect design, a technical breakthrough, an ideal submarine, its name became the most popular among submarines. Subsequently, not only submarines, but also other equipment and mechanisms began to be named in his honor; “Nautilus” almost became a brand. So in 1970, the name “Nautilus” was given to a series of mechanical sports simulators, which radically changed the method of training bodybuilders. The famous rock band “Nautilus Pompilius”, although it was named after the mollusk Nautilus (Nautilus Pompilius), its name was so often associated with the literary “Nautilus” that the lead singer, Vyacheslav Butusov, was often called Captain Nemo. In 2003, Rover Computers named its new series of laptops, the RoverBook Nautilus, after the sci-fi submarine. The company's president commented on the name as follows:

At one time, the ideas presented in Jules Verne's novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” were truly revolutionary. And in many ways they remain so today.

Also named “Nautilus” is the habitable space module BA 330 (English) designed by NASA (its first launch into space is scheduled for 2012).

Criticism

Gallery

Notes

1. Illustration for the first edition of the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” 1869 (artists Newville and Ryu)
2. Jules Verne. 20,000 leagues under the sea.
3. E.L. Brandis Next to Jules Verne. - ISBN 5-08-000087-2
4. Nautilus C 2000 Induction Flow Meter. Retrieved March 20, 2009.
5. Podmoskovye.ru. Holidays in the Moscow region. Retrieved March 20, 2009.
6. HOTEL NAUTILUS - INN BUSINESS CLASS HOTEL. Retrieved March 20, 2009.
7. Diving Center Nautilus. Retrieved March 20, 2009.
8. Diving club "Nautilus". Retrieved March 20, 2009.
9. Nautilus Restaurant (Dinopark). Retrieved March 20, 2009.
10. Vl. Gakov. Captain of the Nautilus.
11. Edouard Launay. In the footsteps of Captain Nemo. French writers. Retrieved January 25, 2009.
12. Shapiro L. S. Nautilus and others. Russian submarine fleet. Retrieved May 3, 2009.
13. It is worth noting that at the end of the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the Nautilus attacks an English ship (this is not directly indicated, but is quite clearly hinted at).
14. Jules Verne. Indian Ocean // 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
15. Jules Verne. Mobilis in mobile // 20,000 leagues under the sea.
16. Jules Verne. Part three. Chapter XVI // Mysterious Island.
17. Jules Verne. Some numbers // 20,000 leagues under the sea.
18. Jules Verne. Floating Reef // 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
19. Jules Verne. Everything on Electric Power // 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
20. Jules Verne. Black River // 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
21. Jules Verne. Hecatomb // 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

The 18th century is known as a period of constant wars, sea and land battles, political turmoil, and even a change of government regime during the Great French Revolution. But the inventors and scientists did not care about everything that shook the peace of kings, queens and governments; they were completely captured by the idea of ​​​​creating a perfect submarine that could completely replace the surface fleet. The same idea was sparked by a young, promising scientist, inventor, who came from among Irish emigrants who arrived in America in search of a lucky break - Robert Fulton.

From childhood, the boy persistently studied drawing and painting, planning to become a famous artist and glorify the glorious name of his father. But life turned out completely differently. One fine day, having collected the remains of the family budget, Robert Fulton bought a ticket on a ship that was supposed to take him to England, where the guy planned to devote himself to the craft of an artist.

American scientist, inventor Robert Fulton

The long voyage showed Robert that he was not interested in drawings, but in the design of ships; he became so interested in shipbuilding that, having changed his original plans, he continued his journey until he reached the shores of France, where he began to study engineering, in order to later design his own model of the ship .

Studying in France did not pass without a trace. Possession of new knowledge and skills made Fulton one of the most advanced people of his time, an innovator in the field of shipbuilding. He even managed to get a personal reception with Napoleon Bonaparte himself to receive money for the construction of an underwater ship called the Nautilus. The first consul, who was no stranger to everything new and modern, did not refuse the request.

In 1797, Fulton received the necessary funds from the Treasury and immediately began construction work. The submarine was built in the shortest possible time, and in 1800 it was launched, plunging more than 7 meters. But the first success did not stop Fulton; he continued construction and by the next year the Nautilus, 6.5 meters long and 2.2 meters wide, was presented to the public.

Submarine Nautilus

The shape of the submarine resembled a sharpened cigar; at the bow of the ship there was a small control room with several portholes. The movement of the boat was carried out using two separate engines, which allowed it not only to move under water, but also on its surface. Nautilus was the first boat in the world equipped with such equipment, with which it was possible to move at a speed of at least 1.5 knots per hour under water and approximately 3-5 knots on the surface. It should also be noted that after surfacing, the sail opened above the boat, which actually contributed to an increase in the speed of the vessel. The sailing mast was attached to a special hinge, which had to be removed each time before diving to depth, and hidden in a special compartment located on the hull.

The exact origin of the name of the boat is unknown, but it is assumed that the underwater ship was named after the sea mollusk - nautilus, the shell of which resembled a boat sailing. Maneuvering underwater at the Nautilus was carried out using a horizontal rudder, and the boat sank and surfaced only after filling or emptying a special ballast tank. Since the Nautilus was intended for combat, there should have been room on it for weapons, for which an ordinary powder mine was used. However, they did not place the mine on the boat itself; for the safety of the boat’s crew, it was dragged behind it on a strong cable, which also served to guide it under the bottom of the enemy ship. The detonation of the mine was carried out using electric current.

Marine mollusk - nautilus

Despite the equipment being so advanced for that time and the success of the first tests, Robert Fulton was never able to test the operation of the boat in combat conditions. The French Minister of War refused to grant the Nautilus crew the military ranks necessary to obtain the status of prisoners of war in the event that the boat was captured, and Fulton, in turn, refused to tell him the secret of the ship's movement. He was offended and left for England. In response to the offer of his services, the English minister even promised the inventor a considerable sum of money if he forever forgot about his invention.

On January 21, 1954, the nuclear submarine Nautilus was launched. She became the world's first submarine with a nuclear reactor. Five facts about the submarine, the creation of which opened a new page in the history of the Cold War, in our material

Nautilus was launched on January 21, 1954 in the presence of US President Dwight Eisenhower, eight months later the submarine was accepted into service with the US Navy, and on January 17, 1955, Nautilus began sea trials in the open ocean. 25 years later, the world's first nuclear submarine was withdrawn from the American fleet, and in 1985 it turned into a museum.

The submarine was named after the legendary ship of Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The fictional Nautilus had outstanding dimensions and technical characteristics for its time. Thus, Captain Nemo on his submarine covered a distance of 20 thousand leagues under water (approximately 90 thousand kilometers) in just seven months. Jules Verne's Nautilus could descend to a depth of 16 kilometers and accelerate underwater to 50 knots. In addition, the literary submarine could destroy surface ships using a special ram - a metal “tusk”, which was placed on the bow. However, according to another version, the world's first nuclear submarine was named not after the Nemov submarine, but after another American submarine, USS Nautilus (SS-168), which took part in the battles of World War II.

2. Russian roots of the creator of Nautilus

“The Father of the Nuclear Fleet” Hyman Rickover was born in 1900 in the town of Maków Mazowiecki, which was part of the Russian Empire before the October Revolution. The surname Rickover comes from the name of the village of Ryki, located near Warsaw. The creator of the world's first nuclear submarine came to the USA at the age of six; his family was forced to emigrate.

3. Huge mass

Due to the too high specific gravity of the nuclear installation, it was not possible to place some of the weapons and equipment provided for by the project on the submarine. The main reason for the weight was biological protection, which includes lead, steel and other materials - about 740 tons in total. As a result, Nautilus's entire armament consisted of six bow torpedo tubes with an ammunition load of 24 torpedoes, despite the fact that a larger number was assumed when designing the submarine.

4. Too much noise

One of the main shortcomings of the submarine was the terrible noise. The cause of its occurrence was strong vibrations of an unknown nature. The waves that Nautilus created caused vibration of the submarine's structures with a frequency of about 180 Hertz, which was dangerously close to the vibration values ​​of the boat's hull. If these vibrations coincided, the submarine could collapse. During the tests, it was found that the noise, which was created already at a speed of eight knots, and vibration were an obstacle to the normal launch and control of torpedoes. At a speed of 15-17 knots, the crew of the submarine was forced to communicate by shouting. The high noise level made the sonar useless already at a speed of four knots.

5. Reached the North Pole

On August 3, 1958, Nautilus became the first ship to reach the North Pole under its own power. To conquer this geographical point, the submarine was equipped with special equipment that made it possible to determine the condition of the ice, and a new compass that operated at high latitudes. Just before the trip, William Anderson, who was at the head of the operation, obtained the latest maps and directions to the depths of the Arctic and even made an air flight that repeated the route planned for Nautilus.

On July 22, 1958, the submarine left Pearl Harbor with the goal of reaching the North Pole. On the night of July 27, the ship entered the Bering Sea, and two days later it was already on the outskirts of the Arctic Ocean in the Chukchi Sea. On August 1, the submarine sank under the Arctic pack ice and two days later Nautilus reached its goal - the Earth's North Geographic Pole.

Steampunk lives and wins! New achievements of this design style include a submarine made in the best traditions of the nineteenth century by the modern Captain Nemo.

Bob Martin came up with the idea for this submarine immediately after reading Jules Verne's classic book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. He took the submarine from the 1954 Disney animated film of the same name as the basis.
Of course, this is not a full-fledged submarine, but only a radio-controlled model of it.
The creator estimates the size of his brainchild compared to the original as one to thirty-two. As a result, the length of the modern Nautilus was about 170 centimeters.

As mentioned above, the boat is controlled using a radio remote control. It has dive and ascent control systems similar to those found in real submarines.

The boat also has interior and exterior lighting, as well as a lithium-ion battery that powers it with electricity. Inside the boat, everything is the same as the prototype - the captain's bridge, furniture, instruments, only many times smaller.

The production of this steampunk submarine, straight out of the pages of the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, cost Bob Martin fifteen thousand dollars. But he plans to more than compensate for them by selling the Nautilus to some collector willing to pay a lot of money for a childhood fantasy realized.

Jules Verne is a name known to all fans of science fiction and adventure. The main character of the works of this wonderful writer is Captain Nemo, an oceanographer and inventor who built the Nautilus submarine. In the time of Jules Verne, such a ship seemed an incredible and fantastic literary invention. I wonder, was the legendary Captain Nemo just a figment of the writer’s imagination or did he have prototypes among real people? To answer this question, let's look at facts about some interesting people.

Adopted son of an Indian Raja

Jules Verne's literary gift was embodied in his numerous novels, so beloved by readers. But when creating his works, the writer used not only his imagination, but also relied on reliable facts about scientific discoveries and inventions made by outstanding people, among whom were scientists, travelers, political and military figures. The writer even had a special card index, which he collected for many years.

This file contains interesting information about Nana Sahib, the adopted son of an Indian Raja. In 1857, he led an uprising of soldiers serving in the British administration - the sepoys. These soldiers were from the local population, but during their service they acquired military experience, had weapons, and rebelled against the English yoke over the Indian people.

The revolt, led by Nana Sahib, spread across a large area of ​​central India. The rebels occupied the city of Kanpur. The struggle against English tyranny was waged for two years, but the actions of the rebel groups were poorly organized and scattered, and there was a lack of strategic preparation and synchronicity. This led to the uprising being eventually crushed. Nana Sahib was forced to hide in the difficult jungles of the country and lead local partisan detachments. There is no information about the further fate of the sepoy leader in Jules Verne’s card index...

Son of "Mr. Y"

The writer’s card index contains a card with the intriguing inscription “White Raja, son of the Englishman Mr. N. One of the creators of the Monitor.” Researchers managed to decipher the mysterious recording. The “Mr. Y” mentioned in this card turned out to be a military topographer from England. During the years of his service, he traveled through half of the Indian lands, and even threw in his lot with the adopted daughter of the Raja of the Principality of Bundelkhand. The family had two children - a boy and a girl. The topographer sent his son to study in England. Having received an engineering education, the young man returned to his homeland. At that time, his father had already resigned, because he knew that popular uprisings were brewing, and he did not want to speak out against the Indian people.

Not wanting to participate in popular unrest, “Mr. Y” decided to leave with his family to his homeland, England. But the family opposed the move and he left alone. When the sepoy uprising broke out in India, the son of a retired military surveyor took a direct part in the unrest in one of the regions of the country. He was known under the pseudonym White Raja. Realizing that the popular uprising would be suppressed, the young man returned to his hometown of Bundelkhand, took his wife and mother, and they finally left for England.

But the English authorities began searching for the White Raja. Trying to escape arrest, he left for America, where the Civil War had broken out at that time. The young man took the side of the northerners in this fight.

Residents of the southern United States at that time were working on the construction of the warship Merrimack, which had a pair of engines and an armored steel hull. How could the wooden sailing ships of the northerners fight such a “monster”?

After analyzing the situation, White Raja decided to turn to the Swedish shipbuilder D. Erikson for help. He invited the scientist to use his own funds to build a ship that would combine an armadillo and a submarine. According to the White Raja's design, the deck of this ship should have only had a pipe and two gun turrets.

After considering this proposal, Erickson made the necessary changes to the project and submitted it to US President Lincoln for consideration. The project was approved. Construction of the vessel began immediately.

Meanwhile, the Southern battleship was doing its dirty work. They had already sunk three sailing ships of the northerners. But the construction of the new ship, designed by the White Raja, was coming to an end. The ship was named "Monitor". As soon as he entered the battle, the Merrimack, having encountered unexpected resistance from an equally strong enemy, took to flight.

This is how the man who invented the ancestor of modern submarines left his place in history. It is a pity that his real name is not known, just as his future life is not known. Jules Verne, when creating a novel about Captain Nemo, used only those few facts from the biography of the White Rajah that he managed to collect. However, Nana Sahib was not forgotten by him.

Jules Verne underestimated technological progress

It is not known whether Jules Verne’s novel influenced progress in the field of shipbuilding, but the writer’s assumptions on this matter, put into the mouth of Captain Nemo, were erroneous. As the legendary captain said in the novel, “...in the field of shipbuilding, our contemporaries are not far from the ancients. It took several centuries to discover the mechanical power of steam! Who knows whether even in 100 years a second Nautilus will appear!

But technological progress outstripped Jules Verne's expectations. Less than 16 years after the publication of the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1870), a submarine with an electric engine was launched in England. She was named after the Julierne submarine - Nautilus. Since that time, shipbuilding has accelerated, and in the early 30s of the twentieth century, submarines were created that were not inferior in size to their forefather, the Nautilus, and in many respects superior to it in technical parameters. And in 1954, American shipbuilders built the world's first submarine with a nuclear reactor - SSN-571. The engine, which uses powerful atomic energy, allows submarines to be completely autonomous. The year 1966 was marked by the launch of the first Soviet nuclear submarines, which circumnavigated the world without surfacing.

The fairy tale “Nautilus” brought to life...

Created by the imagination of a talented writer, the Nautilus submarine probably seemed like a fairy tale to the first readers of the novel, which was published almost a century and a half ago. According to Jules Verne's idea, the ship could reach a speed of 50 knots and descend to a depth of 16 kilometers. Even after 150 years, humanity has not yet discovered such depths in the world's oceans. The Mariana Trench, where Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh descended in 1960, is considered the deepest to date. The Trieste bathyscaphe, which carried the researchers, reached the bottom of a depression 11 km deep.

Only the Soviet submarine Project 661, powered by a nuclear engine, was able to approach the speed of Jules Verne’s fantastic Nautilus. Her speed under water reached 44.7 knots. Of course, modern submarines are tens of times larger in displacement and number of crew members than their literary ancestor, the Nautilus.

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