The engine-room, clearly lighted, did not measure less than sixty-five feet in length. At the bottom was a fourth partition, that separated this office from the engine-room. Next to the kitchen was the berth-room of the vessel, sixteen feet long. Near this kitchen was a bath-room comfortably furnished, with hot and cold water taps. They also heated a distilling apparatus, which, by evaporation, furnished excellent drinkable water. The streams under the furnaces gave out to the sponges of platina a heat which was regularly kept up and distributed. There electricity, better than gas itself, did all the cooking. A door opened into a kitchen nine feet long, situated between the large store-rooms. The partitions had doors that were shut hermetically by means of india-rubber instruments, and they insured the safety of the Nautilus in case of a leak. Total length thirty-five yards, or one hundred and five feet. The anterior part of this submarine boat starting from the ship's head: the dining-room, five yards long, separated from the library by a water-tight partition the library, five yards long the large drawing-room, ten yards long, separated from the captain's room by a second watertight partition the said room, five yards in length mine, two and a half yards and lastly, a reservoir of air, seven and a half yards, that extended to the bows. Theengine, the ballast, the several accessories and apparatus appendages, the partitions and bulkheads, weigh 961.62 tons." The second envelope, the keel, twenty inches high and ten thick, weighs alone sixty-two tons. The first is not less than two inches and a half thick, and weighs 394 tons. "These two hulls are composed of steel plates, whose density is from. Its sides cannot yield it coheres spontaneously, and not by the closeness of its rivets and the homogeneity of its construction, due to the perfect union of the materials, enables it to defy the roughest seas. Indeed, owing to this cellular arrangement it resists like a block, as if it were solid. "The Nautilus is composed of two hulls, one inside, the other outside, joined by T-shaped irons, which render it very strong. Its area measures 6032 feet and its contents about 1500 cubic yards that is to say, when completely immersed it displaces 50,000 feet of water, or weighs 1500 tons. These two dimensions enable you to obtain by a simple calculation the surface and cubic contents of the Nautilus. It is not built quite like your long-voyage steamers, but its lines are sufficiently long, and its curves prolonged enough, to allow the water to slide off easily, and oppose no obstacle to its passage. The length of this cyhnder, from stem to stern, is exactly 232 feet, and its maximum breadth is twenty-six feet. It is very like a cigar in shape, a shape already adopted in London in several constructions of the same sort. is an elongated cylinder with conical ends. Verne's plot in Twenty Thousand Leagues is relatively simple and serves largely as a framework for describing both the wonders of the underwater world and the technologies needed to realize the author's prophetic vision of undersea travel and exploration.Ĭaptain Nemo relates that the Nautilus ". TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, 1869Īs an inspiration to the submarine pioneers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, no other literary figure loomed as large as Jules Verne, the "father of science-fiction" and the author in 1870 of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. No tempest to brave, for when it dives below the water, No collision to fear, for it alone swims in deep water No cove to run short, for electricity is the only power No boilers to burst, no fire to fear, for the vessel is made of iron, not of wood No rigging to attend to, no sails for the wind to carry away No defects to be afraid of, for the double shell is as firm as iron, Nautilus - "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" On the NAUTILUS men's hearts never fail them.
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