Nautilus
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USS
O-2 as she was originally named ,was put in service for US
Navy 19.October 1918 under Joseph Austins commando in Coco
Solo. She patrolled around the Panama canal until she was
laid up in July 1924 in Philadelphia. In 1931 she was
deleted from the US Navy lists and bought for the symbolic
amount of one dollar and transferred to US Shipping Board.
She was rebuilt for use in Wilkins-Ellsworth upcoming
Arctic expedition and renamed Nautilus after a grandeur
ceremony at the harbor in New York where also the
grand-children of Jules Verne participated. Nautilus sat
course for Norway and Bergen. Sir Hubert Wilkins believed
that a submarine could be a good platform for scientific
surveys in polar areas. He had participated on several
other expeditions over the ice, and now wanted to get
under the ice and map the polar sea. Nautilus left Bergen
5. August and sailed to Svalbard where they re-supplied,
and then sat course towards the ice. 19 August they made
contact with the polar edge and the following weeks they
were struck by misfortune. Numerous attempts to get under
the ice failed, had to be abandoned. To avoid the whole
expedition to be a complete failure they sailed along the
edge and made surveys. After their surveys they headed
back to Bergen, but Wilkins didn't want to bring the
submarine back to USA and applied for a permit to scuttle
her. 20.November 1931 Nautilus disappeared in the deep
between Askøy and Helleneset. The wreck was located in
1985 on a depth of 350 meter, and in 1999 the wreck was
filmed by a ROV. Also see the "other" Nautilus in Leicestershire.
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 Picture: Nautilus Originally from skovheim.org Courtesy of Norsk Polar Institutt Last updated: August 2017 |
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