Jules Verne's novels "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "The Mysterious Island" are well-known and readable books. One of the main characters of these works is the mysterious Captain Nemo, engineer, inventor, ocean scientist, creator of the fantastic submarine ship "Nautilus". But I wonder if this literary character had prototypes? We will try to answer this question.
Raja's son …
It turns out that Jules Verne spent many years collecting a card index, which he used to create his numerous novels. It contained information about scientific discoveries and inventions of that time, about outstanding scientists and travelers, political and military leaders, and so on. Researchers of the writer's work found in the card index information about one of the leaders of the Indian sepoy uprising - Nana Sahib. Sepoys in India were called local soldiers who served the British administration. And these people, who had a certain military experience, and most importantly, were armed, rebelled against British rule.
Raja's adopted son Nana Sahib led the uprising in June 1857 and, together with his troops, captured the city of Kanpur. The revolt engulfed all of central India and lasted for about two years. However, these performances, as a rule, were scattered, disorganized, and did not coincide in time. And the British managed to suppress them. Nana Sahib went into the jungle. He probably led a partisan movement in his region for some time. The further fate of the Sahib, however, is unknown.
… and the rajah's grandson
In the archives of Jules Verne, there was also another card with a short note: "White Raja, son of the Englishman Mr. N. One of the creators of" Monitor "(?)". By now it has been possible to decipher this record. Mr. N was a British military surveyor who had traveled half of India during his years of service. He married the adopted daughter of a local rajah in the principality of Bundelkhand. From this marriage a son and a daughter were born. The son received a good engineering education in England, and then returned to India. His father had retired by that time: he felt that an explosion of popular indignation would soon follow, and did not want to participate in its suppression. The topographer invited his family to leave for England, but not only his wife, but also his son and daughter-in-law refused to follow to the metropolis, and the father left alone.
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When the sepoy uprising began, the son of "Mr. N" joined the rebels and acted in one of the regions of India under the name of White Raja. He quickly realized that the uprising was doomed, returned to his native Bundelkhand and, together with his mother and wife, nevertheless moved to England. There, however, he was threatened with arrest - and then the White Raja decided to leave for the United States of America. He got there at the height of the Civil War and sided with the northerners.
Southerners at that moment were completing the warship "Merrimack" with an armored steel hull and a steam engine. Wooden sailing ships of the northerners were defenseless against such a monster.
And then, in 1860, the White Raja came to the well-known Swedish shipbuilder D. Erickson with a proposal to build a hybrid of an battleship and a submarine at his expense. On the deck there were only two gun turrets and a pipe. Erickson made some changes to this project and reported it to Lincoln. The US President gave an order to urgently build such a ship.
A few months later, the armored Merrimack of the Southerners went out into the ocean and immediately sank three enemy sailing ships. But by then the new ship of the northerners was almost ready. They called it "Monitor". At the very first collision of two armored steam ships, the Merrimack shamefully "fled" from the battlefield.
The real name of the White Raja is still unknown, as is his further fate. Jules Verne collected fragmentary information about this man and used it to create the image of his hero Captain Nemo. Here, of course, Nana Sahib was not forgotten either.
Do you know that…
For the first time the idea to build a submarine was proposed back in 1578. English mathematician William Bourne was going to create a ship from wooden frames covered with leather. The sailors would have to row under water.
Jules Verne was wrong
Captain Nemo allowed himself to remark in his novel that “… in the field of shipbuilding, our contemporaries left not far from the ancients. It took several centuries to discover the mechanical power of steam! Who knows if the second Nautilus! Will appear even in 100 years.
Fortunately, Jules Verne and his hero were wrong. The novel "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" was published in 1870, after which the development of the submarine fleet proceeded at an accelerated pace. After some 16 years in England, an electric submarine, which was named after the ship of Captain Nemo, goes under water, and by the early 1930s the submarines reach the size of the Nautilus.
In 1954, the world's first nuclear submarine, SSN-571, entered service in the United States. The nuclear reactor has become a powerful source of energy for submarines, allowing them to be completely autonomous. In 1966, Soviet nuclear submarines, for the first time in history, circumnavigate the world without ever surfacing.
Project "Nautilus"
… The Nautilus was created by Jules Verne's imagination almost a century and a half ago. To the first readers of the novel, this submarine seemed like a fabulous structure. Recall that the "Nautilus" was able to descend to a depth of 16 kilometers and accelerate under water to 50 knots. - Humanity has not yet discovered such depths in the ocean. But in 1960, on the Trieste bathyscaphe, Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh made a record dive into the Mariana Trench to a depth of 11 kilometers.
As for speed, the Soviet nuclear-powered submarine of Project 661 reached a submerged speed of 44.7 knots, that is, almost the maximum speed of the Nautilus. Modern submarines in displacement surpass Captain Nemo's ship dozens of times, and their crews number hundreds.
In 2006, the Nautilus submarine project was presented at an exhibition in Dubai. The appearance of the submarine is as close as possible to the appearance of its literary prototype. Nautilus is intended for tourists, it is designed for 10 passengers, the maximum diving depth is 30 meters. The projected cost of the boat is three million dollars. Let's hope that this project, created under the direct influence of Jules Verne's fantasy, will be realized.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №9. Author: Vasily Mitsurov, candidate of historical sciences