About

Nemo is Latin for "no one."

Verne took it from Homer. Odysseus, trapped in the Cyclops' cave, gives his name as Outis — nobody — so that when the blinded giant roars for help, his neighbours hear only that nobody has hurt him. It is a trick played on power by someone who cannot afford to be named while standing inside it.

Verne's Captain Nemo sails under no flag, having renounced his nationality outright. The Nautilus moves beneath the shipping lanes rather than on them, and Nemo provisions it entirely from the sea — food, fuel, metals, electricity, all drawn from the water and the seabed. He is not hiding from the world so much as operating under it, watching the traffic of empires pass overhead. The detail usually forgotten is Verne's later revelation that Nemo had been a prince. He was not an outsider peering in. He came from the top of a system he walked away from, and his quarrel with it was the informed kind.

This publication takes the same vantage.

Some of what appears here is analysis of the open record. Some of it comes from conversations — with the people who finance, build, regulate, and are constrained by these systems. Those conversations are the reason the analysis is worth reading and the reason it cannot be signed.

On sourcing. Nothing here is classified, confided in confidence, or attributed to anyone who did not expect it. Where a view originates in a conversation rather than a document, that is stated, and the speaker is characterised only as closely as they have agreed to. Judgements are labelled as judgements. Where the argument rests on inference rather than evidence, you will be told which. Anonymity is not a stylistic choice. It is the condition on which the access exists. Please help preserve it.

team@captainnemo.simplelogin.com