USS Shark (SS-8)
USS Shark/A-7 , also known as "Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 8", was one of seven s built for the United States Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. She was the third boat of the USN to be named for the shark. Used primarily for training, she was transported to the Philippines, in 1908. During WWI she served as harbor defense in Manila Bay.
Design
The s were enlarged and improved versions of the preceding Holland, the first submarine in the USN. They had a length of overall, a beam of and a mean draft of. They displaced on the surface and submerged. The Plunger-class boats had a crew of one officer and six enlisted men. They had a diving depth of.For surface running, they were powered by one gasoline engine that drove the single propeller. When submerged the propeller was driven by a electric motor. The boats could reach on the surface and underwater.
The Plunger-class boats were armed with one torpedo tube in the bow. They carried four reloads, for a total of five torpedoes.
Construction
Shark was laid down on 11 January 1901, in Elizabethport, New Jersey, at the Crescent Shipyard, by Lewis Nixon, a subcontractor for the Holland Torpedo Boat Company, New York City; launched on 19 October 1901; sponsored Mrs. Walter Stevens Turpin, wife of an officer on duty at Crescent Shipyard; and commissioned at the Holland Torpedo Boatyard at New Suffolk, New York on 19 September 1903.Service history
Over the next three and a half years, Shark operated locally at the Naval Torpedo Station, in Newport, Rhode Island, conducting firing tests with torpedoes and participating in early research and development efforts in the field of undersea warfare. Assigned to the First Submarine Flotilla, in March 1907, Shark was stationed at the United States Naval Academy, at Annapolis, Maryland, in the spring of 1907.In April 1908, Shark was taken to the New York Navy Yard, and decommissioned there on 21 April. Loaded onto the collier, Shark and her sister ship, comprised the auxiliary's deck cargo as she proceeded, via the Suez Canal, to the Philippines. Shark was relaunched soon after her arrival at the Naval Station at Cavite, in July, and was recommissioned on 14 August 1908.
Asiatic Fleet and WWI
Over the next several years, the submarine torpedo boat operated out of Cavite, interspersing training with periodic upkeep and repair work. On 17 November 1911, Shark was officially renamed A-7.During World War I, A-7 and her sister ships, were based at Cavite, and carried out patrols of the entrance to Manila Bay.