SAVANNAH
A nuclear-powered passenger-cargo ship? It not only sounds like a tough sell, it was. The keel of the first nuclear-powered passenger-cargo ship, the 595 ft N.S. Savannah, was built at New York Shipbuilding in Camden, N.J. In 1962 it was chartered to States Marine Lines for experimental commercial use

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Hailed as the "pride of an ailing U.S. fleet," the Savannah was built, in part, as a training platform for future nuclear vessels. Outside the military, though, nuclear propulsion flopped. One killer was crew costs. A June 1963 editorial in Marine Engineering/Log called the elegant white ship, "our merchant marine's biggest white elephant." In the end, labor disputes over wages for the highly skilled crew had quickly ended one of the world's most unique and complex merchant ships.

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