The US Navy Bought Its First Submarine, USS Holland
On this day · 11 April 1900
On a single spring day in 1900, the US Navy paid $150,000 for a gasoline-and-electric craft that rewrote naval warfare.
On April 11, 1900, the United States Navy acquired its first commissioned submarine, the USS Holland, paying $150,000 for the small underwater craft. The purchase is still marked every year as National Submarine Day.
The boat was designed by Irish-born engineer John P. Holland and built in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Roughly 54 feet long with a crew of six, she ran on a gasoline engine while surfaced and switched to battery-powered electric motors when submerged. She carried a reloadable 18-inch torpedo tube plus a pneumatic dynamite gun in the bow.
She was not America’s first submersible, but she was the first that could stay down and still fight.
The 1775 Turtle had attempted a submerged attack more than a century earlier, yet the Holland was the first vessel able to run beneath the surface for an extended period. Commissioned that October, she trained the first generation of US submariners and set the basic template for modern submarine design.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
