The Lower Corridor

The cell, by Riou

The Lower Corridor

Where we are on the plan

ft of the salon, my original Nautilus had two decks. I put little above the library and dining room, but placed all the rooms described by Aronnax in the second part of his tour on the upper deck, thus providing space for the diving room on the lower deck. I gave the layout more thought this time but arrived at a similar arrangement. As I've theorized elsewhere, I assumed Nemo and the professor were on different decks aft for the two halves of their tour and placed the various rooms accordingly. This tour generally reverses the path of theirs.

As shown in the plan above, the corridor aft of the dining room has two sections, separated by a watertight bulkhead. The first short section is under the main staircase section on the upper deck. There is a great deal of room to starboard since the corridor is located on the port side but also sufficient room for a good-sized cabin to port. The second section runs alongside the cell and leads to the diving room.

Looking aft down the corridor to the diving room

The corridor is roughly modeled at the moment, without the doors shown in the plan above.

At the L-corner, looking into the dive room.

I designed the L-shaped corridor and located the cell to satisfy Aronnax’s ten-meter walk to the dining room. The corridor is a meter wide and 2¼ high. There is room on the port side for several small cabins. These might be storage rooms or individual cabins for more privileged crewmembers like the mate, or the engineer. One of these could be the cabin where Aronnax examined the injured man.

The ladder at the short end of the L, just outside the door to the cell, is mentioned by Aronnax in his account of their capture. In my layout the ladder provides rapid access to the lower deck from the crew’s quarters above and fits the utilitarian character of the aft part of the boat.

Looking inboard, toward the door of the cell

I’ve treated the 3x6 meter cell as the crew’s mess. Aronnax describes a wooden table and five chairs. The number is insufficient for the crew and puzzling for so large a room. My explanation is that the crew moved many of the chairs when the captives were taken aboard. They could take their meals elsewhere but would need seats for the time the castaways were locked up. Since both the mess and the Captain’s dining room are on the lower level and galley is above I’ve added a dumbwaiter off the corridor, visible only in the plan at present, to transport meals and dinnerware between the decks.

Looking into the cell

This is where Aronnax's tour began on his first trip forward. Our tour goes next to the diving room.

More to come...

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to the Dining Room

to the Upper Corridor

to the Diving Room