Wilkins Arctic Submarine Nautilus

Notes

In early 1931, Australian explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins and American arctic pioneer Lincoln Ellsworth teamed up with the idea of taking a submarine under the ice to the North Pole. The joint venture was known as the Wilkins-Ellsworth Trans-Arctic Expedition, and after raising capital from various investors including famous newspaper man William Randolph Hearst, Wilkins approached submarine engineer and industrialist Simon Lake to assist with the task.

At first, Lake offered Wilkins his old submarine Defender, but Wilkins immediately judged the old boat to be too small for the arduous task. Wilkins and Lake approached the Navy and were able to secure an agreement to lease the decommissioned submarine ex-USS O-12 (SS-73), which was laying in reserve at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. This would be an ideal situation for Lake, as his company had built the O-12 during WWI and he was intimately familiar with her design. The obsolete O-12 was no longer wanted by the Navy so they transferred ownership of the boat to the U.S. Shipping Board, who then agreed to lease the boat back to the newly formed Lake & Danenhower, Inc. for conversion for Wilkins. Former USN submarine commander Sloan Danenhower was now a business associate of Simon Lake, and his expertise got him the job of being the expedition's submarine skipper. The Shipping Board agreed to lease the boat for one dollar for one year, with the only other stipulation being that when the expedition was completed that the boat be returned to Navy control or be scuttled in water at least 1,200 feet deep (370 m), so that it could not be used in military operations against the United States.

Lake was granted the rights to use the Philadelphia Navy Yard drydock for the initial conversion work and he used that time to strip the exterior of the boat down to the main deck. He also demilitarized the boat by cutting off the torpedo tubes where they penetrated into the torpedo room. The portions that remained were permanently sealed up with flanges. A diver lock-out chamber was added to the torpedo room, along with a hatch in the bottom to allow the diver to exit and to lower scientific instruments into the water. The rest of the torpedo handling equipment was removed and the remainder of the space turned into a laboratory. The boat's bow was reinforced with concrete and extra steel so that a collision with the ice would not damage it. Other interior refurbishment work was done on the boat, as she had been sitting in reserve for six years and was in bad shape.

She was then towed to the John H. Mathis & Company shipyard in Camden, NJ. where the rest of the conversion work was done. A large ice skid, somewhat like an upside down ski, was built over the main deck and the space underneath in closed in. Other experimental features were added like ice drills that were intended to bore through the ice to bring air to the submerged submarine, a hydraulic spar on the tip of the bow to cushion collisions with the ice, and an extendable skid to provide a shock-absorber effect under the ice. Most of these contraptions were the product of Simon Lake's rather fertile imagination. They were of dubious use and were only barely tested prior to the boat's departure for the Arctic.

In true Simon Lake fashion, the work to convert the boat, now named Nautilus (inspired by Lake's fascination with Jules Verne), took much longer than anticipated and ran considerably over budget. They were pressed for time, as it was the desire of Wilkins and Ellsworth to get the expedition going during the Arctic summer, when conditions were much more favorable. Badly needed work to refurbish the engines, motors, hydraulics, and structure was either rushed through or was entirely deferred. This would prove to be a fateful decision.

The overall design of the conversion work reflected Lake's naivete about Arctic conditions, and his prediliction towards a romantic and unrealistic view of the rigors of exploration. For instance, the boat was not equipped with heaters, and the crew suffered terribly from the bone chilling cold that radiated inward from the steel hull. Freshwater in tanks routinely froze solid and there was only one toilet for the entire crew, and that was inconveniently placed between the main engines. The ice drill proved very difficult to use in dockside tests and it failed routinely to bore into test blocks of ice. In the arctic against the rock hard ice found there it was completely useless. For some reason, the bow planes had been removed by Lake in Philadelphia, leaving only the stern planes for underwater control, a problematic state of operation at best. The engines failed on the trip across the Atlantic, and they had to be hurridly overhauled in England before departing for the polar region

Despite the issues, Wilkins pressed on with the expedition, driven by the pressure of his investors and the overbearing influence of Hearst. They made it to the ice pack and even operated under it for short periods. They gathered much useful scientific data, but on an overall basis the expedition was nearly a total failure, with the crew nearly in an mutinous state from the horrid conditions onboard. The expedition ended in a Norwegian fjord near Bergen, where Wilkins and Danenhower lived up to the terms of the contract and scuttled the boat in deep water. It was later discovered and surveyed by Norwegian divers in 1981.

See the photos and video below for a more complete story of the conversion work and the pioneering expedition. Also see this page for a reprint of an article by Sloan Danenhower describing the conversion work done to the O-12/Nautilus. Special note... the drawings below come from the Syracuse American News Paper, Sunday March 1, 1931 edition. It is likely that the paper has gone out of existence. No mention of it still being in publication could be found anywhere. It may have been absorbed by another paper or just gone out of business as many papers have.

Nautilus configuration drawings

This is an overall view of the configuration of the Nautilus as outfitted for the arctic expedition. The humpbacked superstructure was added during the conversion and was essentially an upside-down ski that would theoretically allow the boat to slide under the ice pack. Shown below are closeups of this drawing with callouts explained

Courtesy of the Syracuse American News Paper, Sunday March 1, 1931 edition.

This enlargement is from the right side of the diagram above and show the former torpedo room.

1. Hydraulic cushioning bowsprit to telescope gently in collisions with ice.
2. Mushroom type anchor
3. Anchor windless
4. Diving compartment
5. Exit hatch/moon pool through which divers can emerge from the vessel underwater
6. Air lock through which divers can enter diving compartment
19. Ballast tanks
20. Forward trim tank
44. Steel and concrete reinforced bow, giving boat a "hard nose" to prevent damage in ice collisions

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