USS Holland (SS-1)

USS Holland, laid down as Holland VI, was the first submarine commissioned by the United States Navy, although the Navy had earlier owned other underwater craft. John Philip Holland designed her and she was built at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for the Holland Torpedo Boat Company, which became the Electric Boat company in 1899. She was launched on 17 May 1897, bought by the Navy on 11 April 1900 and commissioned on 12 October 1900. A gasoline engine drove her on the surface and charged her batteries, and an electric motor drove her submerged; she carried a bow torpedo tube and a dynamite gun and had a crew of six. She trained midshipmen and submariners at Annapolis until she was decommissioned in 1905, and was finally scrapped in 1932.