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Exploration3 August 1958

USS Nautilus Passes Under the North Pole

USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine, went under the Arctic ice and became the first vessel to pass beneath the North Pole, crossing from the Pacific to the Atlantic under the ice.

USS Nautilus entering New York Harbor after its voyage under the North Pole (25 August 1958)
USS Nautilus entering New York Harbor after its voyage under the North Pole (25 August 1958)

U.S. Navy · Public domain · Source

Launched in 1954, Nautilus was the first submarine able to run submerged for weeks without surfacing, powered by a nuclear reactor. Its name was handed down from earlier US Navy ships, though everyone thought of the submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Leaving Hawaii in July 1958, it passed through the Bering Strait and dived under the ice near Point Barrow, north of Alaska.

At 11.15 p.m. on 3 August its commander, William Anderson, announced: “North Pole.” After nearly 96 hours and about 2,900 km beneath the ice, Nautilus emerged in the sea east of Greenland — the first vessel to cross the Arctic from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

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States and rulers at the time
United States — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Before and after

Earlier
1955 Vietnam War
Later
1960 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics

Themes that include this event

  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas1702 – 1958

    Jules Verne’s novel of Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus circling the world beneath the sea — the treasure ships of Vigo Bay, La Pérouse’s wrecks, the giant squid and the Atlantic cable behind it, and the people who really reached the South Pole and passed under the North Pole after the novel went there first