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 crew member who died when an accident occurred under mysterious conditions inside the "Nautilus". When the "Nautilus" returns to the Atlantic Ocean, a pack of "poulpes" (usually translated as a giant squid, although in French "poulpe" means "octopus") attacks the vessel and kills a crew member. Throughout the story Captain Nemo is suggested to have exiled himself from the world after an encounter with the forces that occupied his country that had devastating effects on his family. Not long after the incident of the poulpes, Nemo suddenly changes his behavior toward Aronnax, avoiding him. Aronnax no longer feels the same