Public Domain Super Heroes
Register
Advertisement
Captain Nemo
CaptainNemo

Real Name

Prince Dakkar

First Appearance

20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

Created by

Jules Verne

Origin[]

Captain Nemo, real name Prince Dakkar, is a freedom fighter who resisted first the British colonization of his subcontinental fiefdom and then all European and similar colonial era expansionists.

His great wealth was turned to the production of extremely advanced technology, chief amongst which was his atomic submarine, the Nautilus.

Nothing concerning his past is revealed in the Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, excepting his having reason to hate the countries of the world and his having lost his family at some point in the past.

In The Mysterious Island, it is revealed that Captain Nemo is Prince Dakkar, son of the Hindu Raja of the Kingdom of Bundelkund in India, and also a descendant of the Muslim Sultan Fateh Ali Tipu of the Kingdom of Mysore in India. The latter famously fought a series of wars with the British, employing artillery rockets, which led to the introduction of military rocketry in the west.

He was deeply antagonistic to the British Empire, due to its conquest of India. After the bloody Indian Rebellion of 1857, one of the most devastating wars of the Victorian Era, in which he lost his family and his kingdom, he devoted himself to scientific research and developed an advanced submarine, the Nautilus.

He and a crew of his followers cruise the seas, battling injustice, especially imperialism, by preying on the shipping of the European colonial empires. They derive bullion from the various shipwrecks that dot the ocean, their most notable plundering ground being the Spanish wrecks in the Bay of Vigo.

In his travrels, Nemo viewed coral formations, found sunken vessels, explored the Antarctic ice barrier, saw the Transatlantic telegraph cable, and the legendary underwater realm of Atlantis. He even traveled to the South Pole where he and his crew were trapped in an upheaval of an iceberg on the way back, caught in a narrow gallery of ice from which they are forced to dig themselves out. His passengers also donned diving suits to hunt sharks and other marine fauna with air guns in the underwater forests of Crespo Island, and also attended an undersea funeral for a crew member who died during a mysterious collision experienced by the Nautilus. When the submarine returned to the Atlantic Ocean, a school of giant squid ("devilfish") attacks the vessel and kills another crewman.

He claims to have no interest in the affairs of the world above, but occasionally intervenes to aid the oppressed, giving salvaged treasure to the people of Crete who are revolting against their Ottoman Turkish rulers, by saving (both physically and financially) an Indian pearl hunter who was the unfortunate victim of a diving accident, or by saving the castaways from drowning in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and covertly watching over the castaways in The Mysterious Island.

Like many Indian princes of the era, Nemo has a European education, as he states that he had spent his youth studying and touring Europe. In his first meeting with Professor Aronnax and his companions, the latter speak to him in French, English, Latin and German, all of which Nemo later reveals he is fluent in.

421px-20000 Nemo South Pole flag

Public Domain Appearances[]

Public Domain Literary Appearances[]

Public Domain Film Appearances[]

  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)

Public Domain Comic Book Appearances[]

  • Science Comics #5, 7-8
  • Weird Comics #8, 10

See Also[]

Advertisement