HMS/m A1

Vickers launched A1 at Barrow-in-Furness on 9 February 1902. Earlier Royal Navy submarines had been built there under licence from an American design; Historic England describes A1 as the first submarine designed and built in Britain for Royal Navy use. She was a small coastal boat using a petrol engine on the surface and batteries and an electric motor under water. On 18 March 1904 A1 was making a practice attack on the cruiser Juno in the eastern Solent. The submarine was low in the water and did not see the passenger liner Berwick Castle crossing its course. The liner's master thought the bump might have been a practice torpedo until A1 failed to return.

Berwick Castle struck A1's tower and sank her in seven fathoms of water. A Swedish salvage company raised the submarine a month later and the navy repaired it for more training and tests. In 1910 built-up gas exploded aboard, injuring seven men and leaving A1 unfit for ordinary service. In August 1911 she was being used without a crew in submerged target trials off Selsey Bill when she sank again. The exact short account varies between being under tow, working under automatic steering and deliberately sunk as a target. What is secure is that nobody was aboard and the boat was meant for target work. Salvors returned the next day, but A1 had vanished. Water left inside still gave some lift, allowing strong tides to carry her about five miles before she settled.

Both officers and all nine men aboard died in the 1904 collision, making A1 the Royal Navy's first fatal submarine loss. Their bodies were recovered after the boat was raised and buried at Haslar Royal Naval Cemetery near Portsmouth. The Haslar submarine memorial names them with sailors later lost in A3, A5 and A8. Seven men survived the separate gas explosion in 1910 with injuries. The present wreck off East Wittering contains no crew: A1 was unmanned when she sank in 1911. This matters because calling the protected point a war grave would place the eleven deaths at the wrong sinking and five miles from the 1904 collision site.

A fisherman caught A1 in his net in 1989 and ended a search that had lasted almost seventy-eight years. The submarine lies in about twelve metres of water, nearly complete and partly sunk into soft seabed. Its pressure hull appeared intact in earlier checks, although outer metal was badly corroded and missing in places. Pipes and working parts remain, along with rare internal wooden lockers. After divers forced open forward loading hatches and fittings disappeared, navy divers sealed access again. Later sound and seabed surveys recorded the hull and nearby objects. A protected area extends 300 metres from it; unauthorised diving, entry or removal is not allowed.

A1 marks the point at which Britain began designing its own submarines and shows the dangerous learning that followed. The collision, later chlorine-gas emergency, petrol-gas explosion and loss during target work expose risks that were not yet fully understood or controlled. Its machinery, tower, tubes, batteries and fittings can answer questions that plans alone cannot. A1 also has strong links to Barrow, Portsmouth, Haslar and the eastern Solent, the Royal Navy's first submarine training ground. Along with A3 and A7 it is one of only three surviving A-class hulls. The wreck records the machine's later experimental life; the Haslar graves and memorial record the eleven people killed during its first sinking.