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HMS A1 1904

HMS A1: A1 Submarine - May 1904
Image: Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Marker: recorded wreck position (Steam era).

Key facts

NameHMS A1Wikidata label
Year lost1904Wikidata P793 significant event, point-in-time qualifier
EraSteam eraderived from year
Ship typesubmarineWikidata P31 instance of
Cause of lossWar actionKeyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence
Nationality / flagUnited KingdomWikidata P137 operator → P17 country
OperatorRoyal NavyWikidata P137 operator
Sea / oceanEnglish ChannelNatural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coastEnglandofficial dataset
Position50.7425, -0.9213Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3)
Protected WreckList entry 1000043Historic England
Designated1998-11-04Historic England
Restricted area28.26 haHistoric England
Grid referenceSZ 76206 94211Historic England

About the wreck

HMS A1 was the Royal Navy's first British-designed submarine, and their first to suffer fatal casualties.

She was the lead ship of the first British A-class submarines and the only one to have a single bow torpedo tube. She was actually sunk twice: first in 1904 when she became the first submarine casualty, with the loss of all hands; however, she was recovered, but sank again in 1911, this time when she was unmanned. The wreck was discovered in 1989 and was designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act in 1998. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England.

Diving & visiting

This is a designated Protected Wreck under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. Under the Act, diving on or otherwise interfering with the wreck inside its restricted area requires a licence; see the Historic England list entry for details.

She was accidentally sunk in the Solent on 18 March 1904 whilst carrying out a practice attack on the protected cruiser HMS Juno by being struck on the starboard side of the conning tower by a mail steamer, SS Berwick Castle, which was en route from Southampton to Hamburg. She sank in only 39 ft (12 m) of water, but the boat flooded and the entire crew was drowned. One consequence was that all subsequent Royal Navy submarines were equipped with a watertight hatch at the bottom of the conning tower. The casualties were buried at Haslar Royal Naval Cemetery.

She was raised on 18 April 1904 and repaired and re-entered service. Following a petrol explosion in August 1910, she was converted to a testbed for the Admiralty's Anti-Submarine Committee.

Location

  • Recorded position: 50.7425, -0.9213 (Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3); may be approximate)
  • Sea / ocean: English Channel
  • Nearest coast: England

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS A1 (revision 1375687809), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Casualty, recovery, loss and rediscovery”; condensed by selecting paragraphs; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.

Protected Wreck data © Historic England 2026. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).

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Browse more: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off England · English Channel · Steam era

Further reading