Jules Verne’s novel of Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus circling the world beneath the sea — the treasure ships of Vigo Bay, La Pérouse’s wrecks, the giant squid and the Atlantic cable behind it, and the people who really reached the South Pole and passed under the North Pole after the novel went there first
Alphonse de Neuville · Public domain · Source
During the War of the Spanish Succession an Anglo-Dutch fleet destroyed the Spanish treasure fleet and its French escort sheltering in Vigo Bay — leaving a long legend of sunken treasure ships.
The French expedition of La Pérouse, exploring the Pacific, vanished after leaving Botany Bay in Australia in 1788; forty years later the wrecks of both ships were found at Vanikoro.
The French warship Alecton met a giant squid some five or six metres long off the Canary Islands and, trying to harpoon it, brought back only its tail end — one of the first records of the legendary sea monster as a real animal.
The giant steamship Great Eastern laid a submarine cable from Ireland to Newfoundland, giving Europe and America their first lasting telegraph link.
Jules Verne’s novel of Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus travelling round the world beneath the sea appeared in a magazine. The twenty thousand leagues (about 80,000 km) are not a depth but the distance the Nautilus travels.
The Suez Canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea opened, greatly shortening the sea route from Europe to Asia.
The Norwegian Roald Amundsen and four companions became the first people to reach the South Pole, by dog sledge. Britain’s Scott and his party, arriving a month later, all died on the way back.
USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine, went under the Arctic ice and became the first vessel to pass beneath the North Pole, crossing from the Pacific to the Atlantic under the ice.
French naval officer and explorer who set out to explore the Pacific for Louis XVI in 1785 and vanished with his expedition at Vanikoro in 1788
French novelist whose adventure stories such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and Around the World in Eighty Days made him a father of science fiction
French diplomat and entrepreneur who won the concession for the Suez Canal from Egypt and opened it in 1869
Norwegian polar explorer, first to sail the Northwest Passage and, on 14 December 1911, the first person to reach the South Pole; lost in the Arctic in 1928 while flying to search for missing colleagues