USS Nautilus (SSN-571) Nuclear Landmark. Visitors may tour the forward two compartments, with guidance from an automated system. Despite similar alterations to exhibit the engineering spaces, tours aft of the control room are not permitted due to safety and security concerns. USS Nautilus (SSN-571) USS "Nautilus" (SSN-571) was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine and the first submarine to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole on 3 August 1958. Sharing names with Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Jules Verne's classic 1870 science fiction novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", and named after another that served with distinction in World War
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and begins to sympathize with Ned Land. Near the end of the book, the "Nautilus" is attacked by a warship of some nation that had made Nemo suffer. Filled with hatred and revenge, Nemo ignores Aronnax's pleas for mercy. Nemo—nicknamed "angel of hatred" by Aronnax—destroys the ship, ramming it just below the waterline, and consequently sinking it into the bottom of the sea, much to Aronnax's horror, as he watches the ship plunge into the abyss. Nemo bows before the pictures of his wife and children and is plunged into deep depression after this encounter. For several days after this,