Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea, described by Professor Aronnax as "your ideal blue sea" and known to the Romans as mare nostrum, is a basin of immense historical and strategic importance in the novel. It is a sea bordered by the very civilizations Captain Nemo has fled, and its waters are thick with the memories of ancient empires and modern conflicts. For the Nautilus, the Mediterranean represents a cramped, dangerous corridor, a place of high-speed transit and profound revelation, where the captain's past and his mission of vengeance come into sharpest focus.
A High-Speed Passage and a Forbidden Sea
The Nautilus's crossing of the Mediterranean is remarkably swift, accomplished in just forty-eight hours. Captain Nemo, who finds no pleasure in these waters so close to the lands he has renounced, drives the ship at a speed of twenty-five miles per hour, often submerged to avoid the heavy traffic of European shipping. This forced pace denies the passengers any real chance to explore, and it dashes Ned Land's hopes for an escape, as the ship races past the coasts of Africa and Europe like an express train. The sea itself is described as a "battlefield where Neptune and Pluto still struggle for world domination," a place of volcanic fires and violent storms, reflecting the turmoil within the captain himself. The narrative notes that the Mediterranean's lower strata are a graveyard of ships, a "huge boneyard" where countless vessels have met their end, a grim foreshadowing of the destruction to come.
The Arabian Tunnel and the Bay of Vigo
Two of the most significant events of the voyage occur within or adjacent to the Mediterranean. The first is the passage through the Arabian Tunnel, a secret underwater passage discovered by Captain Nemo that connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean beneath the Isthmus of Suez. This feat of natural and navigational genius allows the Nautilus to bypass the African continent entirely, a journey that would have taken weeks for a surface ship. The second is the visit to the Bay of Vigo, on the Atlantic coast of Spain, which the Nautilus enters immediately after leaving the Mediterranean. There, Captain Nemo reveals his immense wealth, harvesting the gold and silver from Spanish galleons sunk in a 1702 naval battle. This treasure, he explains, is not for personal gain but to fund his war against oppression, a revelation that deepens the mystery of his identity and his motives.
The Final Act of Vengeance
The Mediterranean's legacy of conflict culminates in the novel's most horrifying event. After leaving the bay, the Nautilus is pursued by an unidentified warship. Captain Nemo, in a fit of implacable rage, declares himself "the law, I'm the tribunal" and uses his vessel as a weapon of mass destruction. He rams the warship below its waterline, sending it and its entire crew to the bottom. This act of mass execution, witnessed by the horrified Professor Aronnax, is the climax of Captain Nemo's long-nurtured vengeance. The location of this sinking, at latitude 47° 24' and longitude 17° 28', is revealed to be the very spot where the French ship Avenger was lost in a heroic battle seventy-four years earlier. This revelation connects Nemo's personal vendetta to a larger history of national struggle and martyrdom, transforming the Mediterranean from a mere geographical passage into the final, bloody stage for his personal drama.
