The #submarine Nautilus left #Bergen in early August 1931, drawing crowds of locals who watched the refurbished US military submarine steam toward the open sea, on a voyage to #Svalbard with goal up going under the North pole ice to #Alaska.

The crew – twenty strong, including Australian adventurer and idea man George Hubert Wilkins and the renowned geophysicist Harald U. #Sverdrup – stocked up at Marineholmen before embarking on a perilous Arctic trek.

The voyage quickly turned chaotic: an early engine failure forced a tow to the Irish coast, a crewman drowned during the Atlantic crossing, and a second total breakdown left the sub adrift for two days until the USS Wyoming rescued it.

Even after extensive repairs in England, the Nautilus suffered further setbacks – engine trouble again, ice‑binding, and a missing depth‑gauge, likely sabotaged by a scared crewmember that had lost faith. Yet Wilkins pressed on, ultimately achieving a brief, battered breakthrough beneath the Spitsbergen ice before the vessel was purposefully sunk in Bergen fjord later that year.

Unlike its namesake from #JulesVerne stories, this Nautilus is only 0.06 leagues under the sea.

Photo via University of Bergen Library: https://marcus.uib.no/instance/photograph/ubb-bs-ok-19146.html
#Norway #Norge #NorskPix #Historical #BlackAndWhitePhotography