c81% of the weight of Captain Nemo’ s Nautilus was made in Birkenhead, England, so can we say that the Nautilus was ‘made in Birkenhead’?
John Lamb
Hello Everyone,
In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) Captain Nemo orders the
steel plates of the hull of the Nautilus from Laird’s of Liverpool which is
Birkenhead’s Laird’s shipyard lying opposite Liverpool, England.
The hull of any submarine is of course practically the whole structure. Jules
Verne gives the Nautilus a Birkenhead-built double hull and using Nemo’s
own figures (see table below), Birkenhead’s contribution is estimated at over
80% of the total weight of the vessel. Nemo then states the Nautilus was
‘completed’ on his desert island.
Lairds of Birkenhead had a track record of building ships in prefabricated
steel sections for assembly in remote places, the most famous being the
explorer David Livingstone’s steamer Ma Robert and the John Randolph, the
first iron ship seen in the Americas.
Lairds built the steel sections of the Ma Robert’s hull, and it was
then ‘completed’ on the Zambezi River, whereas in fiction Lairds built the
steel sections of the hull of the Nautilus and it is then ‘completed’ (Verne’s
own words) on Nemo’s desert island.
No historian would claim that the Ma Robert was ‘built in Mozambique’ –
quite simply it is a Birkenhead built ship that was assembled elsewhere and
so can the same be said of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus?
Confirmation that a vessel basically assembled in a remote location remains
a Birkenhead built ship, comes from the pen of Jules Verne himself in The
Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa (1872)
regarding the steamer Queen and Czar.
"Mr. Emery," interrupted the Colonel, "this vessel is a masterpiece from Leard and Co's
manufactory in Liverpool.
It takes to pieces, and is put together again with the greatest ease, a key and a few
bolts being all that is required by men used to the work. You brought a wagon to the
falls, did you not?"
In the twinkling of an eye the partitions vanished, all the chests and bedsteads were
lifted out, and now the vessel was reduced to a mere shell, thirty-five feet long, and
composed of three parts, like the "Mâ-Robert," the steam-vessel used by Dr. Livingstone
in his first voyage up the Zambesi.
It was made of galvanized steel, so that it was light, and at the same time resisting.
William Emery was truly astounded at the simplicity of the work and the rapidity with
which it was executed.
Apart from the Queen and Czar, four more of Jules Verne’s other fictional
ships were built in Birkenhead, England, so the Nautilus would complete a
mini-Birkenhead flotilla of six!
The other ships were:
The Forward in The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1864).
The Chancellor in The Survivors of the Chancellor (1874).
The Halbrane in An Antarctic Mystery (1897).
The Alert in Traveling Scolarships (1903).
Quentin Skrabec (see previous postings) has stressed how the new steel
technologies used by Lairds influenced Verne after he visited the shipyard in
1859. The infamous ‘Laird Rams’ ironclad warships built by Lairds for the
Confederacy in 1863 in order to smash the wooden ships of the Unionist
blockade and they may also have influenced Nemo’s modus operendi.
They created worldwide headlines as the American government of Abraham
Lincoln threatened war with Great Britain if the ‘rams’ ever left Birkenhead,
they were eventually impounded by the British Government.
This could be culturally important for the town of Birkenhead in the lead up to
Verne’s bicentenary in 2028. One only has to look at how Vigo Bay in Spain
has celebrated its fictional links with Jules Verne to see a how a cultural
template could be followed.
Here are the relevant passages from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (William
Butcher translation) which may help people form an opinion one way or the
other.
Professor Aronnax asks Captain Nemo.
“But how could you construct this wonderful Nautilus in secret?”
‘Each separate portion M. Arronax was brought from different parts of the
globe. The keel was forged at Creusot, the shaft of the screw at Penn and
Co’s, London, the iron plates of her hull at Laird’s of Liverpool, the screw itself
at Scott’s at Glasgow.
The reservoirs were made at Cail & Co at Paris, the engine by Krupp in
Prussia, its beak in Motola’s workshop in Sweden, its mathematical
instruments by Hart Brothers of New York; etc and each of these people had
my orders under different names.’
I set up my workshops on a small desert island in the middle of the ocean.
There with my workmen, that is my good companions whom I instructed and
trained, I completed our Nautilus’
Captain Nemo gives further details of the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea (1869);
The two hulls are constructed from steel plates with a density 7.8 times that
of water. The first hull is no less than 5cm thick and weighs 394.96 tons. The
keel alone, which is 50cm high by 25cm wide, weighs 62 tons; and the total
weight of the keel, the second envelope, the engine, the ballast, the various
fixtures and fittings, and the bulkheads and internal braces is 961.62 tons,
which, when added to the 394.96, gives the required total of 1,356.48 tons.
Am I clear?’.
Jules Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) William
Butcher translation 1998.
The hull of any submarine is of course practically the whole visible structure.
Jules Verne gives the Nautilus a Birkenhead-built double hull, the thicker and
heavier inner pressure hull (referred to by Verne as the ‘second envelope’)
takes Birkenhead’s contribution to over 80% of the total weight of the vessel.
Here, using Verne’s own figures, are how I arrived at over 80% figure.
The first Birkenhead built, outer hull is 394.96 tons.
The Keel (Creusot) is 62 tons.
The engine / batteries is 50 tons (estimate)
The ballast 20 tons (estimate)
Fixtures and fittings 50 tons (estimate)
Bulkheads 50 tons (estimate)
Internal braces 10 tons (estimate)
Propellor shaft 10 tons (estimate)
Propeller 5 tons (estimate)
The first Birkenhead built inner pressure hull is 704.52 tons (estimate)
make up the total weight of 1,356.48 tons.
Adding the weight of the two hulls together (394.96 tons +704.52 tons) gives
1099.48 tons as the total Birkenhead contribution to the Nautilus.
This means that 81.05% of the Nautilus was manufactured in Birkenhead,
which may be broadly comparable to both the real-life Ma Robert and the
fictional Queen and Czar.
So can we say that Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus was built in Birkenhead?
Best wishes
John
Ron Miller
Well, the parts may have been manufactured in Birkenhead but the Nautilus was assembled (i.e,. "built") at Nemo's island. It wasn't a submarine until then.
It's much the same case as, say, any object whose component parts may have been created at one or more locations but assembled into its final form at yet another location.
R
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