Captain William Robert Anderson

Anderson's famous voyage was done under secrecy. In 1958, in direct response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, President Eisenhower ordered the Nautilus under the polar ice, and Anderson, who had commanded the first nuclear submarine since 1957, took it to the North Pole. Admiral Hyman Rickover had picked him as the boat's second commanding officer, and Eisenhower gave him the Legion of Merit. He retired from the Navy as a captain in his early forties and served in Congress from 1965 to 1973.

What the plaque says

Captain William Robert Anderson 1921-2007 Born 1/2 mile north of here on June 17, 1921, William Robert Anderson was a 1943 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He served during World War II and participated in 11 combat patrols in the Pacific. Anderson was the commanding officer of the first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, which made the first transpolar voyage under the North Pole in August 1958. President Dwight D. Eisenhower awarded him the Legion of Merit. Anderson represented Tennessee's Sixth District in Congress from 1965 until 1973. He died in Leesburg, Virginia, on February 25, 2007, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 9.1 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.
• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 18 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Mousetail Landing State Park — 21 mi
  A Perry County state park on the Tennessee River where a leather-shipping landing once stood, with ruins of its pier and blacksmith shop, a historic landing trail and quiet water trails.
• Natchez Trace State Park — 29 mi
  A New Deal state park built on worn-out West Tennessee farmland, where the Fairfield Gullies show what erosion did and kudzu was planted to stop it.

More markers nearby

• Hattie Wyatt Caraway — steps away
• Loretta Webb Lynn — 5.6 mi
• Waverly Disaster — 11 mi
• Gunboats & Cavalry November 4, 1864 — 15 mi