Built at the Electric Boat Shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, Nautilus was launched January 21, 1954, after years of lobbying by Admiral Hyman Rickover, today known as the father of the nuclear navy. Rickover saw the Nautilus, named for the fictional submarine in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, as the test bed for a fleet of undersea boats that could stay submerged for weeks at a time and loiter undetected off hostile shorelines.
Over the next several years the Nautilus set numerous speed and endurance records. In August and September 1957 she traveled some 1,200 nautical miles under polar pack ice and came within 200 miles of the North Pole as part of a research expedition to investigate the possibility of an undersea Northwest Passage. Word of the journey reached the White House through an offhand Pentagon conversation between the Nautilus's captain, Commander William R. Anderson, and Eisenhower's naval aide, Captain Evan Peter Aurand. Eisenhower and his staff immediately saw the implications.
Caption: Nautilus, shown here during her initial sea trial on January 20, 1955, normally carried a crew of twelve officers and ninety enlisted personnel and had a publicly acknowledged submerged speed of "at least" twenty-three knots. Her official crush depth remains secret, although she routinely operated at 700 feet and deeper. General Photographic File of the Department of the Navy, 1943-1958; General Records of the Department of the Navy, 1804-1958; Record Group 80; National Archives.
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