The Nuclear Ship Savannah -- newly digitized 1964 film

We’re extraordinarily excited to announce the recent digitization of a 1964 film all about everyone’s favorite nuclear-powered cargo/passenger ship: The N.S. Savannah!

Catalog description:

Thanks to Ross Koningstein for his help in making this happen. And thanks to Sohail Khan for helping with getting the sound track as the first-ever donor to our film-scanning GoFundMe (linked below).

Some stills from the film

Read more about N.S. Savannah

• Wikipedia entry
• N.S. Savannah Association
• US MARAD N.S. Savannah Site
• Tour of NS Savannah
• Literature review of N.S. Savannah
• N.S. Savannah Engineering Drawings
• Step inside the world’s only nuclear-powered passenger ship – built in 1959 (NPR)

The film was produced for the USAEC and the US Maritime Administration by Orleans Film Productions. It was originally sold for $85 per print, including shipping case.

Contents of the film by timestamp include:

• 00:00 Intro Sea Trials
• 01:52 Intro credits
• 02:21 The S.S. Savannah steam ship
• 03:57 Conventional Merchant Marine
• 04:59 Nuclear-powered ships
• 06:04 Proposal by Eisenhower
• 07:01 Start of Construction
• 08:02 Schematic power cycle
• 09:05 Shielding
• 10:04 Component manufacturing
• 10:37 Training operators
• 12:06 Full-size mockup
• 13:07 Retractable stabilizers and launching
• 14:15 Reactor test assembly
• 17:05 Final assembly and Fueling
• 18:19 Head installation and criticality
• 19:14 Sea trials
• 20:55 First port of call
• 25:32 Panama Canal
• 26:08 Seattle World’s Fair
• 26:49 Service in Galveston
• 27:26 Message from Lyndon B. Johnson

These are loaded into the youtube video as chapters for your convenience.

The N.S. Savannah at the Seattle World’s Fair 1962

My journey to digitizing this video actually started when I happened upon a quote in an old document that said:

"Considered by some marine engineers the most beautiful ship ever built, the sleek white SAVANNAH was shown off to the crowds at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair"

And so, I sought out a picture of N.S. Savannah in Seattle. By going through the newspaper archives around the time of her visit, I found a bad-quality scan of the Savannah with the Space Needle from the October 2 1962 Seattle PI newspaper. The more I looked, the more I decided I needed to get this film digitized, hoping it would have shots from Seattle. And sure enough, it did. But I also wanted to see if I could find the photo from the newspaper. I called local museums and libraries. The MOHAI in Seattle dug through their records and found negatives of Savannah. I ordered scans of two of them and get the rights to post them here. Behold!

Photos from video production

Right after we digitized this, Alice Orleans Jordon, the daughter of the film’s producer, Sam Orleans, reached out and shared some photos from their personal collection. She’s in the film as a child at 22:07 with her mother. She recalls:

They served us fruit cocktail for these takes. I remember it was chilled. I was so impressed! There was a white baby grand piano in the lounge–I learned to play chopsticks on it. The lounge had white, plush carpet. I remember how good it felt on my bare feet!

Here are her photos:

See Also

• Our Digital Reactor History Museum
• Our Old Videos page with a running list of the available and yet-to-be-scanned films out there. If you’re interested in helping to get some of these scanned, check out our digitization GoFundMe and/or contact us!
• Tweet announcement of this
• A huge Flickr album featuring the Savannah