Nautilus

The nautilus or chambered nautilus is a sea animal. It is a cephalopod, like the squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. It grows a large, beautiful spiral shell. The shell is lined with glistening mother-of-pearl. As it grows, it builds partitions which divide the shell into chambers; it lives in the outermost partition. These shells were common decorations in Victorian England and the United States.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a famous poem entitled The Chambered Nautilus." He admires the "ship of pearl" and the "silent toil/That spread his lustrous coil/Still, as the spiral grew/He left the past year's dwelling for the new." He concludes:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul.

Many ships, particularly submarines, have been named "the Nautilus." Three famous ones are:

• Robert Fulton's Nautilus, the first submarine that actually worked;
• Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in the Jules Verne novel Vingt Mille Lieues sous les Mers ("Twenty thousand Leagues Under the Sea")
• The first nuclear submarine, U. S. S. Nautilus