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Seaview - "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"

Seaview, a fictitious privately owned nuclear submarine, was the setting for the 1961 movie and 1964-to-1968 ABC television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The Seaview was similar to an early 1960's James Madison-class SSBN, though longer and wider to accommodate special exploration gear. Seaview had two sister ships, the Polidor (attack sub design), which was destroyed in the third episode of the series, and Neptune, also destroyed in the first season.

For the motion picture, Admiral Harriman Nelson [Walter Pidgeon] was the designer/builder of the Seaview, paid for by his family fortune & government funding, and operated under the auspices of the Bureau of Marine Exploration, US Department of Science (per art director Herman Blumenthal).In the context of the series, the Seaview was one of two experimental submarines designed by retired Admiral Harriman Nelson (Richard Basehart), Director of the Nelson Institute of Marine Research, a top-secret government complex located in Santa Barbara, California, in the then-future years between 1973 and 1983.

The Seaview was prefixed "USOS" only in the 1961 movie. In the television series, it was prefixed "SSRN". In the United States Navy, "SSRN" would indicate a nuclear-powered radar picket submarine, but while Seaview was nuclear, no indication was ever given that she was equipped for radar picket missions. The prefix "USOS," is spoken in a news report during the first minutes of the 1961 movie. Later writings explained that "SSRN" stood for Nuclear Submarine (SSN), Research (R) or SSRN and "USOS" stood for United States Oceanographic Survey.

In the movie, on a Congressional tour of the submarine "Seaview", Admiral Nelson mentions that there are things on the sub that even Jules Verne had not imagined. The next person they meet is Commodore Lucius Emery played by Peter Lorre who was Professor Pierre Arronax's assistant Conseil on the Walt Disney version of the Jules Verne classic 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). The model and interior sets of the submarine cost producer Irwin Allen $400,000, so he was naturally quite keen to get some further use out of them. Since the film was a hit, he was able to convince ABC-TV to turn it into a series, which became the longest-running one he ever had. It's a common problem when replicating a model from any TV show as there were never any two miniatures that were the same. As is the case with Seaview, there were several different scale models produced's each one having unique differences which all fans are familiar with and each fan has his or her own favorite.

Mike's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Zone website notes that "Seaview's intended on-screen length has been bandied about over the years, and certainly the principals involved in her creation cannot agree. Jack Martin Smith recalled in a 1980 interview that Seaview was supposed to be around 300 feet long (highly improbable.) L.B. Abbott recorded, in his book, Special Effects, Wire, Tape and Rubber Band Style, that Seaview was "presumably 350 feet long, utterly unique in design, and visually exciting (regards the length, equally improbable.) The actual blueprints generated by 20th Century Fox's design department and dated 1960 boldly measure Seaview's length as 400 feet exactly, yet publicity for the film upon release, site Seaview as longer than two football fields placed end to end-around 620 feet. This last figure is certainly the most likely given the expanse of the submarine's interior. It is also the figure sited in the July, 1966 issue of American Cinematographer in an article detailing Voyage's deserved Emmy win for special effects. Again, it is the figure sited in Fox's huge press package put together in 1968 for Voyage's entry into the syndication market."

Displacement	7,000 tons 16,500 tons (estimated)
Length	425 feet 172.93 m (567 feet 2 in) (from scale model)
Beam	32 feet 12.19 m (42 feet 1 in) (from scale model)
Height, keel to sail	47 feet 18.9 m (62 feet) (from scale model)
Propulsion	one nuclear reactor, two pump-jet propulsors
Speed	45 knots (estimated)
Complement	90-125 civilians sailors and technicians (estimated)
Armament	16 Polaris missiles, torpedoes, bow laser
Aircraft	one FS-1 flying sub

The length of Seaview may be estimated directly by measureing the "Sherwood Forest" of Polaris missile launch tubes that were placed amidships, in common with other ballistic missile submarines of the day. On submarines of the George Washington and Ethan Allen classes, the "Sherwood Forrest" section of the boat was about 75 feet long. On the much larger Ohio class submarines, the "Sherwood Forrest" section of the boat was about 130 feet long, but this was for 24 missiles rather than 16. The section on this boat containing 16 missiles is about 85 feet long. One website gives the lenght of Seaview as exactly 567 feet 2 inches, an impossibly precise figure said to be derived from a scale model. This number cannot be right, since it yields a "Sherwood Forest" of about 100 feet, which is too large by any measure. Taking the length of the "Sherwood Forrest" section of the boat as about 75 feet long yields a length for the Seaview of about 425 feet, which is in line with contemporaneous statements.

Seaview's hull was designed to withstand a depth of 3600 feet (1 km), and in one episode survived a depth excursion approaching 5000 feet (1.5 km). The transparent-hull "window-section" bow of Seaview was not rounded like a traditional submarine but was faired into a pair of manta wing-like, stationary bow planes (in addition to her more conventional sail planes). In emergencies, a pair of sliding metal "crash doors" shut across the face of the bow's observation deck to protect the four-window transparent surface (introduced in TV series, second season). Theodore Sturgeon, the author of the novelization of the movie, explained the incredible strength of the boat's enormous hullplate/windows (eight in the movie, TV series first season) by revealing that they were formed from "X-tempered Herculite, a top secret process developed by Admiral Nelson."

Seaview's interior was considerably more spacious & comfortable than any military submarine, even the 18,000-ton Ohio-class "Trident" submarines, including among other facilities a "shark aquarium" that could hold large marine animals. (The pool was only seen in the movie, and was never referred to in the television series.) Her volume did not hinder her maneuverability; Seaview routinely broached in a manner referred to as "emergency surfacing" by military submariners, and at a more nearly vertical angle - as high as 60° - than any military submarine has achieved and survived (except perhaps USS Chopper (SS-342)). In one episode, Admiral Nelson expressly stated that the Seaview did not use propellers. Although her actual mode of propulsion was never stated, it was implied several times that Seaview used some kind of aquatic jet engine, which might possibly explain her speed (very fast for a sub) and her penchant for dramatic emergency surfacings.

The Seaview was extensively overhauled & re-fitted between the first & second seasons. The number of bow windows was reduced from eight (Two rows of four) to four (in one row), the Control Room, previously located amidships directly beneath the conning tower, was moved forward to connect directly with the Observation Room, and a large hangar bay was added to the bow, beneath the Observation Room/Control Room combination. This hangar held a fairly large flying submersible aptly called the "Flying Sub" or "FS-1," implying that there were several more back at the base, which would have to be the case since several Flying Subs were lost to mishaps or combat during the run of the show. Promotional materials published between the first and second seasons referred to it as the Flying Fish, but the name was evidently dropped prior to the start of filming and was never used in the show. It was deployed through bomb-bay like doors. As it neared the ocean's surface, its engines could generate enough thrust for the vehicle to take off & fly at supersonic speeds. The Flying Sub was also nuclear powered.