Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1869. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax. The title refers to the distance traveled under the sea and not to a depth, as 20,000 leagues is over 2.5 times the circumference of the earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is four leagues. A literal translation of the French title would end in the plural "seas", thus implying the "seven seas" through which the characters of the novel travel. "wikipedia.org"