This is damn interesting.

The submarine designated 012 in US naval lingo measured in at 175 feet long.

She was, even by the stances of the early 1930s, not a particularly impressive sight, with

a brief career spent meandering about the then-quiet Panama Canal Zone.

Decommissioned on June 17, 1924, she was consigned to the Philadelphia Navy Yard

to await scrapping.

It was an unremarkable fate for a relatively unremarkable vessel.

And were the events indeed to play out in this particular fashion, it is doubtful the

memory of the O-12 would live on past some musty naval archive.

This early and rickety contraption for sailing beneath the waves was, however, destined

for greater things, as she became the first machine to take humans past, or rather beneath,

one of the last great unexplored frontiers the Earth has to offer.

The boat in question was a near antique.

Predating the American entry into World War I, she had been built in 1916 by the Lake

Torpedo Boat Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, designated with the Hull number SS73.

Unexpectedly, her ultimate fate in the hands of Philadelphia's scrappers was sidelined

by an eccentric Australian gentleman, though it is safe to assume that no tears were shed

in the US Naval headquarters when he offered to take

her off the Navy's hands.

O-12 was given a new, though ultimately brief lease on life, in a journey that was to span

the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean and past the rim of the Arctic Circle.

It was an expedition that, in the literal sense, would go where no man had gone before, furthering

...