The Nautilus 



Under the North Pole 



Commander William R. Anderson. 



The Nautilus and her crew are welcomed as 

 they arrive at Portland Bill, England, 

 after completing the historic first voyage 

 beneath the North Pole. 



The last of our sea explorers, Commander William R. Anderson, 

 U.S.N., is very different from those we have already described. 

 Although his responsibilities and the skill with which he carried 

 them out were of the highest order, it was essentially as a leader of 

 a technological team that Anderson's remarkable voyage in the 

 nuclear submarine Nautilus under the Pole was achieved. Yet in a 

 way the voyage was still in the great tradition of naval exploration. 

 Like Cook and Ross, Anderson was dispatched by his country, 

 although he was supported a good deal more generously than 

 explorers of the past. 



Earlier explorers traveled the seas to open up new lands, chart 

 reefs and islands, and define the coasts of continents, but Anderson 

 in the Nautilus explored vast regions under the ice and thus provided 

 a new dimension to sea exploration. The ice that stopped Captain 

 Cook to the north of the Bering Strait was successfully circum- 

 navigated — or more precisely, undernavigated — by the nuclear- 

 powered Nautilus. 



The idea of using a submarine to explore under the ice of the 

 North Pole was not new. Sir George Hubert Wilkins in 193 1 had 

 attempted it, but his bold venture came to nothing. While we now 

 know that the idea was sound, the technical resources at Wilkins' 

 command were not enough. What Jules Verne imagined to be 

 possible in the way of underwater travel in the Nautilus of his imag- 

 ination was to be achieved in reality — but not until the development 

 of controlled nuclear power. 



The history of Anderson's voyage began when Rear (now Vice) 

 Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was first fired with the idea of a 

 nuclear submarine. But the problems inherent in such a revolution- 

 ary scheme were formidable. One was to make a reactor compact 

 and reliable enough to fit inside a ship. At the time, the reactors at 

 Oak Ridge, Tennessee were about the size of two city blocks. 

 Another problem was the development of a safe heat transfer unit 



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