Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas · Jules Verne, 1870
How deep did the Nautilus dive in Twenty Thousand Leagues?
16,000m
Four leagues down, in the South Atlantic in March 1868, with 1,600 atmospheres pressing on the hull. The real ocean is nowhere that deep.
From the bookReal world
On the way south to the Pole, in the South Atlantic at about 45° south, Nemo decides to test the old soundings. Ships there had let out 14,000 and even 15,140 metres of line without touching bottom. So he takes the Nautilus down to see.
Below three leagues the last shells and starfish disappear, and they have passed, Aronnax writes, the limit of life. At 16,000 metres, four leagues, the iron plates tremble, the bars bend and the salon windows seem to bulge under 1,600 atmospheres. Then Nemo calmly offers to take a photograph of the sea floor.
Verne was going by the soundings of his day, which were badly wrong. The real South Atlantic there is about 5 or 6 km deep, and the deepest point in any ocean, the Challenger Deep, is about 10,935 m. And life goes all the way down.
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