Argonaute Submarine

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This is the Argonaute, a French attack submarine from the 1950s that has been decommissioned and placed on display at the Parc de la Villette in Paris. For a small fee, you can visit a little museum of submarine technology, and then take a tour inside this submarine. Even if you are not normally claustrophobic, you will be after visiting this boat! It is quite fascinating, however, and well worth it.

Getting the submarine to the park was a major engineering feat in itself. It was transported by canal into the park, and then hoisted and slowly moved into its current position. Doors were cut in the hull to make access easier. You can watch a film describing this transport of the boat, which is quite interesting (if you’re an engineering type like me).

The inside is still extraordinarily cramped, though; it must have taken a very special kind of sailor to be able to tolerate living inside such a craft. Some crew members slept in cots literally bolted to the propeller-shaft enclosures!

In this photograph, you’re looking at the front end of the boat, with the open torpedo tubes in the foreground (they are covered by a net now—I suppose that someone was trying to sneak into the tubes at night or something). You can see the stairs used to enter and exit the submarine (when the boat was in service, though, there was only a tiny hatch on the top). The red structure to the right is the submarine museum. The large building in the background is the City of Science and Industry.

Photographed on April 5, 2001.