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On 2 October 1901, Vickers launched Holland 1 at Barrow-in-Furness. The 63-foot craft was the Royal Navy’s first submarine, and its launch began the Navy’s Submarine Service. The 125th anniversary in 2026 connects that secretive experiment to Barrow’s later role building Britain’s submarines.
Why Barrow is marking the anniversary
The milestone is tied to a specific launch, not to the start of submarine building in general: Holland 1 entered the water at Barrow on 2 October 1901. Vickers built it under licence from Electric Boat, using a design by John Philip Holland. The Royal Navy Museums’ history of HMS Holland 1 says the arrangement covered five Holland-designed submarines.
At the time, the Royal Navy had been reluctant to adopt submarines while other naval powers, especially France, developed their own. Holland 1 was a small, experimental vessel that offered the Navy a new kind of undersea capability. Its launch is therefore also used to mark the beginning of the Navy’s Submarine Service.
A secret project and a new kind of boat
The construction was kept so secret that Holland 1’s first commanding officer, Lieutenant Forster Delafield Arnold-Forster, recalled having difficulty finding it. As quoted by Royal Navy Museums, he eventually discovered it in a shed marked “yacht shed” in large white letters.
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Arnold-Forster recalled that the boat was only 63 feet long and shaped “like a very fat and stumpy cigar.” The service’s earliest submarine was unlike almost anything the Navy had operated, and the secrecy reflected how unfamiliar and uncertain the project still was.
Launch, first dive and early service
Holland 1’s launch was not its first dive or the start of its sea trials. Those milestones came later:
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- 2 October 1901: Launched at Barrow without ceremony.
- 20 March 1902: First dive, in an enclosed basin.
- April 1902: Sea trials began.
- September 1902: Holland 1 and another Holland boat reached Portsmouth as part of the Navy’s first submarine flotilla.
The boat’s early service was not without danger. An explosion aboard on 3 March 1903 injured four men. In 1904, during the Dogger Bank crisis, Holland 1 left Portsmouth with other British submarines on orders connected with a possible attack on the Russian fleet. Diplomacy intervened, and the submarines were recalled. Admiral Sir John Fisher, quoted in the museum history on 20 April 1904, warned of the “immense impending revolution” submarines would bring as offensive weapons.
From decommissioned boat to museum exhibit
Holland 1 was decommissioned and sold for scrap in 1913. It sank while being towed to the breakers near the Eddystone Lighthouse. The wreck was located in 1981 and raised in November 1982. Conservation included immersion in sodium carbonate solution from 1995; a dehumidified gallery opened in 2001.
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The submarine is now on display at Royal Navy Museums: Submarines in Gosport. The museum provides visitor and ticket information.
How Barrow’s submarine work expanded
Holland 1 was the beginning of a much larger shipbuilding story in Barrow. A sponsored Cumbria Crack feature published on 2 October 2026 reports that 64 Royal Navy submarines were launched from the town between 1914 and 1919, including 39 from 1917 to 1919. It also reports that more than 90 submarines were built there during the Second World War. Those figures are from the local feature and should be understood as its account of Barrow’s production.
The technology changed again with nuclear propulsion. According to the same feature, HMS Dreadnought, the United Kingdom’s first nuclear-powered submarine, was launched into Walney Channel on 21 October 1960. Today, the feature describes Barrow’s shipyard as building Astute- and Dreadnought-class submarines. It reports more than 13,000 people working on that construction, a date-sensitive workforce figure attributed to the feature.
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The link between the first boat and the current yard
Barrow’s anniversary is not a claim that the 1901 craft and today’s nuclear-powered submarines are technically alike. It marks continuity of place and purpose: a submarine built in secrecy in a Barrow shed became the start of a naval service, while the town went on to build successive generations of boats for the Royal Navy.
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The 2026 Cumbria Crack feature also quotes Commander David “Bing” Crosby on the teamwork required aboard a submarine: “The ship’s company all rely on each other, from the captain right down to the most junior person on board.” The crew’s dependence on one another is a human through-line between the experimental beginnings of the service and its modern boats.
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