Heartless Navy forgot all about me

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So what am I crying about? When the Nautilus was ready to retire, a fight ensued on what to do with her.

Many of our Navy ships, from destroyers, to battleships and even carriers that served so gallantly in the Pacific War, were towed to the junkyards and scrapped.

This was not the destiny of the Nautilus. She had a lesson for all students of the sea. But where would the Navy berth the venerable old ship and convert her into a museum?

The bidding was intense. The high muckety-muck admirals wanted to give the Nautilus her final resting place in the Washington Navy Yard. Admiral Rickover, lore has it, preferred berthing the Nautilus at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, sort of like a headrest for him where he would be buried. And last, but not least, the nice folks at the Groton New London Navy Base wanted to honor this groundbreaking vessel permanently at its birthplace.

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That’s where I come in. At the time I was state director of tourism. I took a phone call from an old Navy submariner who somehow acquired an old Second World War diesel sub which he opened to visitors, but not a major attraction. It was tied up to a dock on the Thames River. He wanted to talk to me about a plan to secure the Nautilus for Connecticut.

He was likeable, cheerful and full of confidence that the Nautilus and Groton were intertwined like Lacoon and the serpents. His plan: pump up all the school kids in the state to a Nautilus for Connecticut campaign and ask them to send in their pennies to put their money where their mouths were.

We didn’t manage to electrify every school kid in the state, but just announcing our campaign attracted the attention of the folks in high places — legislators, Navy veterans, patriotic doers with big pockets.

The idea of saving the Nautilus for Connecticut spread across the state like a tsunami. We won. The great ship was coming home. I’m happy to report that on the day the Nautilus was towed back down the Thames to the Navy yard, I was on board a tugboat escorting her home.

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The Nautilus is now properly called the Historic Nautilus and is the core of a splendid museum, just outside the gates of the base, that tells the story of man’s long quest to sail under waves, from H.J. Wells prescient novel "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" to the Turtle, the USN Seadragon and so forth.

I selected those two ships because I enjoy their stories. The Turtle was built in the first year of the Revolutionary War, and powered by one man turning the prop by pumping bicycle type levers by foot. It attacked a British warship in New York harbor but failed to sink it. From there on, though, underwater craft were the Navy’s destiny.

The USN Seadragon surfaced through a hole in the ice close to the North Pole after the Nautilus’ exploit. But unlike the Nautilus, it did not sail under it. It was August and the sailors set up a baseball game on the ice. If a homerun was hit, the sailors didn’t know if it was slugged the next day, or yesterday.

As for me, oh well, so the Navy had its big party without me.

I had lots of great experiences at sea. I managed to cruise into the Long Island Race aboard a nuclear sub, then sailed from Bermuda to New York aboard the Norwegian students’ tall ship, Christian Radich. I had a wondrous 10 days sailing around the East Coast on the U.S. Coast Guard student ship, Eagle, and later cruised in Long Island Sound on the famous Canadian sloop, Bluenose.