Brutus de Villeroi

Brutus de Villeroi (1794–1874) was a French engineer of the 19th century, born Brutus Amédée Villeroi (he added the aristocratic "de" in his later years) in the city of Tours and soon moved to Nantes, who developed some of the first operational submarines, and the first submarine of the United States Navy, the Alligator in 1862.

In 1832, de Villeroi completed a small submarine, possibly named "Nautilus" in reference to the 1800 submarine created by Robert Fulton.

The submarine was 10 feet, 6 inches long by 27 inches high by 25 inches wide and displaced about six tons when submerged. She was equipped with eight dead-lights on top to provide interior light, and a top hatch with a retractable conning tower for surface navigation. For propulsion, she had three sets of duck-foot paddles and a large rudder. She was also equipped with hatches with leather seals in order to make possible some manipulations outside the hull, a small ballast system with a lever and piston, and a 50 lb anchor. The ship had a complement of three men.

This submarine was demonstrated at Fromentine, Noirmoutier, near Nantes, France, on 12 August 1832, and later to representatives of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1837.

De Villeroi tried several times to sell his submarine designs to the French Navy (1832, 1855 and 1863), but he was apparently turned down every time.

In 1842, de Villeroi was reputedly a professor for drawing and mathematics at the Saint-Donatien Junior Seminary in Nantes, where Jules Verne was also a student, leading to speculation he may have inspired Verne's conceptual design for the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; however, no evidence for Villeroi's employment at Saint-Donatien has yet been found, and no direct link between the two men has ever been established.

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