HMS A1 was the
Royal Navy's first British-designed submarine, and their first to suffer fatal casualties.
She was the lead ship of the first British A-class of submarines (a second, much different A-class submarine appeared towards the end of the Second World War), and the only one to have a single bow
torpedo tube. She was an enlarged and improved
Holland boat - 40 feet (12.2 m) longer than the Royal Navy's five Holland boats. The most notable improvement was the addition of a conning tower. Subsequent A class boats were even larger and differed from her in several respects.
Like all members of her class, she was built at
Vickers,
Barrow-in-Furness. She was
launched on
July 9 1902.
She was accidentally sunk in the
Solent on
March 18 1904 whilst carrying out a practice attack on
HMS Juno by being struck on the starboard side of the conning tower by a mail steamer, SS
Berwick Castle which was en route from
Southampton to
Hamburg. She sank in only 39 feet (12 m) of water but the boat flooded and the entire crew were drowned. One consequence was that all subsequent submarines were equipped with a watertight hatch at the bottom of the conning tower.
She was raised on
April 18 1904 and repaired and re-entered service. Following a petrol
explosion in
August 1910, she was converted to a testbed for the
Admiralty's Anti-Submarine Committee. She was lost a year later when running submerged but unmanned under
automatic pilot. The wreck was discovered in 1989 at Bracklesham Bay.
A01