Category:Submarine (UK)

The British Service Records and Navy Lists pay scant attention to individual submarines, as regard their commanders. This disregard is most keenly apparent in the earliest days of the type. Often, a given submarine commander is listed in a Navy List as being appointed to a submarine depot ship "for command of submarines", with the specific sub (or subs) being omitted. This invites the interpretation that the submarines may have, in some cases, been treated as taxi cabs within a fleet.

Deployment of Submarines

The British submarines started with a set of five numbered Holland-type boats designed in the United States which entered service in 1903. These were perhaps mostly experimental articles, but were soon followed by a series of gradually-improving coastal designs armed with 18-in torpedoes: thirteen "A" class, eleven "B" class and, by 1906, thirty-eight "C" class. Formal use of these submarines as a war-fighting resource seemed slightly slower – it is not until 1905 that the Navy List shows the creation of two small flotillas based in Portsmouth and Devonport.

This organisation, of just two point-defence bases, would persist until around 1912, by which time the fleet had over fifty submarines commissioned, and had fielded the first eight "patrol" type submarines of the "D" class. The two existing flotillas were now joined by six new formations, and all were given numbers.

In Command of the Service

The man in charge of the Royal Navy's submarine forces was designated the Chief of the Submarine Service in 1921. In 1929, this evolved to become Rear Admiral, Submarines or Rear Admiral (S).

Dates of appointment given:

See Also

Footnotes