In the summer of 1949 the American President Harry S. Truman arrived at the shipyards in
Groton Connecticut, to dedicate the world's first nuclear powered submarine. It was the
start of a revolution in travel at sea. To get this far had taken years of research
and development, and although it was President Truman's signature on the hull, it was left
to Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower, the wife of his successor, to perform the actual launching.
By then it was 1954. By the standards of the day the Nautilus,
as she was called, was enormous . More than three hundred feet long, she could travel
several times round the world under water without refuelling. Armed with underwater
ballistic missiles, the nuclear submarine was to become the world's most formidable
weapon. The Soviet Union soon followed Nautilus with atomic submarines of her own, and the
boats, with their huge fire-power and almost unlimited range of travel underwater, became
the foundation of the Cold War's nuclear deterrents. Deterrents apart, the most practical role
the nuclear submarines were to play was in surveillance. They could glide undetected
into enemy waters and with their sophisticated electronic equipment and the good old-fashioned
expedient of looking through the periscope, the crew could spy on shore installations,
other warships, suspicious cargo boats, and all other espionage targets the Cold War required.
On board Nautilus, on the 8000 mile maiden voyage, what really caught the public's imagination
was the 2000 mile journey made under the Arctic ice cap. She submerged near Port Barrow, then
travelled beneath the North Pole itself re-emerging at Spitzbergen, north of Norway. From there
she sailed to the United Kingdom for a very special welcome. British scientists had made
a substantial contribution to the building of the boat, particularly the nuclear physicists,
who were later to help Britain develop her own nuclear submarines.
At the end of her voyage, Nautilus was awarded a Presidential citation. The American ambassador,
Mr. J.H. Whitney explained why. J H WHITNEY: 'In completing the first voyage
in history across the top of the World, by cruising under the Arctic icecap from the
Baring Straits to the Greenland Sea' So began a new chapter in the Cold War armaments,
and a new era in ocean travel.