Nautilus - Futuristic submarine on the sci-fi adventure THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN NEMO/CBS/1978. Jose Ferrer starred as Captain Nemo, the scientific genius and creator of the Nautilus, the 19th century submarine from Jules Verne's classic novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. When the Nautilus got wedged under a coral reef in the year 1878, Captain Nemo placed himself in suspended animation. A century later, an explosion from a Navy war game depth charge dislodged the Nautilus. With the assistance of the US Navy, Captain Nemo was resurrected from his long sleep and soon agreed to aid the US Navy in exchange for the government's promise to repair his submarine. Another submarine seen on the short-lived series was The Raven, commanded by Professor Waldo Cunningham's (Burgess Meredith). TRIVIA NOTE: The tale of the Nautilus submarine surfaced in two Walt Disney enterprises. First in the fantasy-adventure motion picture 2000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) starring James Mason, Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre and later as a ride at the Disneyland  Theme Park in Anaheim, CA. The film Nautilus depicted the famous submarine the Jules Verne novel of the same name. The theme park ride featured the USS Nautilus - the world's first nuclear-powered submarine that traveled below the polar ice cap of the artic ocean on August 3, 1958 with its crew of 116 to become the first ship to cross the geographic North Pole. A year later in June 1959, Walt Disney opened a Submarine Lagoon ride at Disneyland with scaled down diesel versions of the USS Nautilus and seven sister submarines - the Triton, Sea Wolf, Skate, Skipjack, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Ethan Allen (built by Todd Shipyards in San Pedro). The ride simulated the voyage under the North Pole taken by crew of the USS Nautilus and its Commander William R. Anderson. A sister attraction in The Magic Kingdom in Florida featured nine submarines resembling the Nautilus in the 1954 Disney film. The Florida Submarine ride opened in 1971 and closed in 1994. The West Coast sub ride at Disneyland closed after forty years in 1998 (the subs were painted yellow in mid-1980s). For an "in-depth" story on submarines read: Father of the Submarine (a biography of George Garrett) by William Scanlan Murphy.       

The Nautilus in the Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)	The USS Nautilus in Disneyland's Submarine Lagoon ride in California
The real nuclear-powered USS Nautilus roaming the oceans.

"Think of it. On the surface there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence. Here I am free! Imagine what would happen if they controlled machines such as this submarine boat. Far better that they think there's a monster and hunt me with harpoons."
	-- Captain Nemo, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

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