Travelling at the Poles

Travelling at the Poles

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Another way to travel at the Poles was discovered many years ago. Ice, thousands of feet thick, floats on the polar seas. Beneath it is water. Could a submarine pass safely trhough this water under the ice? Was there an open way under the ice from one side of the North Pole to the other?

In 1931 a British scientist, Sir Hubert Wilkins, tried to find this way in a submarine which he called Nautilus.

It was named after the famous submarine imagined by Jules Verne in his book Twenty Thousand Leagues under de sea. [...]. Wilkins had imagination too. He fixed specials "skis" on top of his submarine. With these he hoped to travel under the ice in the same way that a fly walks across the ceiling! But the submarine was badly damaged by ice and the expedition failed.

Twenty seven years later science made it possible to try again. In July 1958, an American atomic-powered submarine left Honolulu. This submarine was also called the Nautilus. Of course its atomic-powered engine was far more powerful than Jules Verne had imagined. It also had dozens of instruments which were its "eyes", "ears" and "fingers" for the dangerous journey.

Scientists believed that there was a deep crevasse under the ice through which a submarine could pass. On 1st August Captain Anderson of the Nautilus found the entrance to this crevasse and entered. From that moment his crew depended upon their instruments to find their way. They had instruments to measure the depth of the water. They had strong lights and television with which they could watch the ice above them and around them. Sometimes they nearly ran into icebergs. Sometimes the walls of the crevasse closed dangerously near them. If their atomic power had failed they would have died. The ice above was thousands of feet thick and no submarine could break through. As they reached the North Pole their compasses failed. They were then in danger of being lost under the ice.

On 5th Ausgust the Nautilus successfully finished its journey. It reached the other side of the polar ice and came up into daylight again in the Greenland Ocean. A new way was now known to  go from Europe to America.