Nautilus 90 North

                                                 

                                                      Nautilus 90 North

       I find this photo three US Submarines surfaced from under Arctic ice fascinating for several reasons, but primarily because of the huge advances made in the vessels and technology themselves in a relatively short time    

  

      The "trick" is to find thin places,  slowly come up until the top of the sail contacts the ice  and pump ballast until the boat floats up, breaking  through the ice. In some cases, there are actually open areas in the midst of pack ice, called "polynyas" (Russian term) which don't even require breaking ice to surface. Note the vertical position of the fairwater planes on the nearest boat. This is to make it easier to surface through ice. Which led me to this Naval History tidbit:

        The name  "Nautilus" is from a type of chambered sea shell which bears very little resemblance to any sort of vessel.

Chambered Nautilus

         The first submersible vessel named "Nautilus" was actually a pair of submarines  designed by Robert Fulton (yeah, the American steamboat guy) for France in  1800 for the "new" French government, possibly to be used against the British Navy.

Fulton's "plan." note the hand cranked propellor and sail!The explosive "carcass" was on the end of the rope

  

Model of Fulton's Nautilus

   On July 3, 1801, at Le Havre, Fulton took the second (the first one had "issues") Nautilus down to the then-remarkable depth of 25 feet.  With his three crewmen turning the crank which made the screw revolve, and two candles burning, he remained for an hour without difficulty. Adding a copper "bomb" (globe) containing 200 ft3 of air extended the time underwater for the crew to at least four and a half hours. 

      One of the renovations included a 1.5-inch-diameter (38 mm) glass in the dome (yep, a "window") , whose light he found sufficient for reading a watch, making candles during daylight activities unnecessary. Speed trials put Nautilus at a "blazing" two knots! on the surface, and covering 400 m in 7 minutes. Perhaps as important to the future of the art, Fulton found that compasses worked underwater exactly as on the surface. The idea was to eventually tow a "carcass" which appears in old drawings to be a composite of a mine and a simple bomb, and either drag it into an enemy vessel or release it in a harbor like a mine.

       For whatever reasons, Napoleon refused to endorse the idea and/or pay Fulton for the work, declaring him a "swindler and a charlatan," following which, Fulton destroyed the prototype and went to England to try to interest the British in his design.

       When Nelson destroyed the French Fleet at Trafalgar, the British lost interest, and Fulton gathered his plans and returned to the United States, where he married wealthy (old Dutch, New York money), gave up submarines, and, in 1807,  designed and built the first commercially successful steamboat, for which he is far better known today.

       The second (and far better known) "Nautilus" concept was never designed and built at all. It was the brainchild of seminal sci-fi author Jules Verne, who in 1880 published  "20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea."  This Nautilus, whose design was never fully explained in the novel, ran on "electrical power" according to its mysterious commander, Captain Nemo. This was far closer to eventual reality than Verne could have known at the time. Older readers will remember the Nautilus as Disney conceived it in 1954, in the eponymous film version of the novel.

           

1954 Disney "20,000 Leagues, Beneath the Sea" Nautilus concept model

                                  

      In the era of CGI, the movie doesn't stand up very well, but the Nautilus resurfaced (get it?) in 2003's  "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."  Fox Studios' "Nautilus" was a far more advanced vessel, still captained by the (now Asian) Captain Nemo,  powered by what, as described in the film, had to be  nuclear power or some as yet undiscovered alternate source.

                         

2003 Fox studios  Nautilus concept

      In a mere 74 years science would catch up with fiction and Jules Verne's submarine vision  would be reality.  Incidentally, In almost exactly 100 years from  publishing , Verne's  dream of men on the moon envisioned in "From the Earth to The Moon" was also realized.

        The third iteration of "Nautilus" was something Verne would have loved. It was primarily the brainchild of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, supported by President Dwight Eisenhower's desire to use nuclear power for something (anything) other than bombs. Post War "Atoms for Peace" projects included attempts to use nuclear explosions for excavation, as airplane propulsion, for civilian electrical power production, and as Rickover insisted over a significant number of "build more carriers" detractors in the Navy,  a power source for the first true submarine, air independent for propulsion and  capable of sustained and high speed underwater operation.

       USS Nautilus' construction began in 1952, using a hull design derivative of the most recent WWII Guppy class diesel boats. The innovation of a reactor plant, vice diesels, was accompanied by research from Westinghouse's Knolls Atomic Power labs, and in truth, Nautilus was ahead of any schedule imagined when it was launched in 1954.  

USS Nautilus SSN 571

       On the morning of January 17, 1955, at 11 am EST, Nautilus' first Commanding Officer, Commander Eugene P. Wilkinson, ordered all lines cast off and signaled the historic message, "Underway On Nuclear Power." Over the next several years, Nautilus  shattered all previous submerged speed and distance records.

        On July 23, 1958, Nautilus departed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii under top secret orders to conduct "Operation Sunshine", the first crossing of the North Pole by a ship. At 11:15 pm on August 3, 1958,  Commanding Officer, Commander William R. Anderson, announced to his crew, "For the world, our country, and the Navy - the North Pole." The radio message was far simpler - "Nautilus, 90 North." With 116 men aboard, this new technology  had accomplished the "impossible", reaching the geographic North Pole - 90 degrees North latitude.  It is noteworthy that, in the process, USS Nautilus steamed under the geographic North Pole, continuing almost 1000 miles under ice.

In 1959 USS Skate, SN 578,  surfaces from under ice, the first vessel to do so.

      

  In 1959, Nautilus's sister ship USS Skate, SSN 578, performed the first actual surface from under ice at the Pole.

      All the above is what in some way or another led me to post the photograph at the beginning of this blog entry.