Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (French: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne, published in 1870. It is about the fictional Captain Nemo and his submarine, Nautilus, as seen by one of his passengers, Professor Pierre Aronnax. In chapter one, talk spreads throughout Europe and America about the sighting of a huge sea creature. The public becomes concerned with a series of shipwrecks.