Ships named Nautilus

Nautilus—derived from a Greek word meaning "sailor" or "ship"—is the name of a tropical mollusk, having a many-chambered, spiral shell with a pearly interior. Nautilus and its variants has also been a common ship's name in several languages for centuries.

A popular misconception is that these ships were named for the fictional submarine in Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In fact, Nautilus was associated with ships long before Verne imagined his vessel.

• HMS Nautilus - nine surface ships (1762–1913), and one submarine (1914–1922)
• USS Nautilus - two surface ships (1799–1859), and two submarines (1930–Present)
  • USS Nautilus (SSN-571) - The first nuclear powered submarine, still in service as a museum ship.
• Nautilus (1800), the first practical submarine, built by Robert Fulton in 1800.
• The fictional Captain Nemo's Nautilus of Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874)
• Nautilus, the Spanish ship commanded by Fernando Villaamil which completed a world circumnavigation from 1892 to 1894.
• USS Nautilus II (SP-559), a 66-foot patrol/escort (1917–1919)
• USS O-12 (SS-73), an O-11-class submarine (1917–1931), only bore the name Nautilus during a civilian arctic expedition in 1931

This article includes a list of ships with the same or similar names. If an internal link for a specific ship led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended ship article, if one exists.