On April 11, 1900, the United States Navy quietly acquired a strange, torpedo-shaped vessel that would alter the nature of sea power for generations to come. It was not a battleship or a cruiser. It had no tall masts or broad decks. It did not fly into battle under a banner of cannon smoke and gallant brass. But it changed everything. That vessel, the privately built Holland VI, would become USS Holland, the first modern submarine commissioned by the U.S. Navy. Her acquisition on that date is now honored as the official birthday of the United States Navy Submarine Force.
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The story of that vessel, and the man behind it, is one of brilliance, stubbornness, and quiet revolution. The man was John Philip Holland, born in 1841 in Liscannor, a coastal village in County Clare, Ireland. His father served in the Royal Coastguard, and his mother was a native Irish speaker. After his father’s death, the family moved to Limerick. There, Holland joined the Irish Christian Brothers, a teaching order, and began his lifelong obsession with engineering and invention. Even in his youth, he was captivated by the dream of navigating beneath the waves. While still in Ireland, he began sketching designs for underwater boats, drawing inspiration from the likes of David Bushnell and Robert Fulton—and no doubt encouraged by the imaginative power of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
In 1873, Holland immigrated to the United States, joining his brothers in Boston before settling in Paterson, New Jersey, where he resumed teaching. A slip on an icy street resulted in a broken leg and a long recovery, which he spent refining his submarine concepts. In 1875, he submitted his first plans to the U.S. Navy. They were dismissed out of hand as the “fantastic scheme of a civilian landsman.” It would not be the last time the Navy failed to see what was submerged in plain sight.
Fortunately for Holland, others did. His younger brother introduced him to the Fenian Brotherhood, a revolutionary Irish nationalist group with grand ideas and very real funding. The Fenians saw Holland’s submarine as a potential weapon against the British Navy. In 1877, they funded the construction of Holland No. 1, a 14-foot craft launched in the Passaic River. The initial launch ended in embarrassment—someone forgot the screw plugs—but once refloated, the boat performed well enough to secure further support.
By 1881, Holland had built the Fenian Ram, a larger and more advanced submarine capable of firing a pneumatic gun. Though the project ended in acrimony over control and finances, Holland had proven that a real, operable, submersible war machine was within reach. He moved on, continuing to design and experiment, enduring repeated rejections from the Navy and mounting frustration with financial backers. But he persisted.
In 1896, Holland established the Holland Torpedo Boat Company and began work on his most successful design yet: Holland VI. The boat was laid down that year at Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey, under the supervision of naval architect Lewis Nixon. Holland was joined by engineer Arthur Busch, and eventually backed by financier Isaac Rice, who would later maneuver the company into becoming the Electric Boat Company in 1899.
The result of their labor was launched on May 17, 1897. At 53 feet 10 inches long, with a beam of 10 feet 4 inches and a submerged displacement of 74 tons, Holland VI featured a gasoline engine for surface propulsion and a 66-cell battery-powered electric motor for submerged travel. She carried a single 18-inch torpedo tube with three Whitehead torpedoes and a pneumatic dynamite gun in the bow—although the dynamite gun was later removed to accommodate improvements to the engine exhaust. Her test depth was 75 feet. She could travel 200 nautical miles on the surface at 6 knots and 30 nautical miles submerged at 5.5 knots. Her crew numbered six.
She had innovations far ahead of her time. Unlike her predecessors, she had internal ballast tanks, horizontal diving planes, and a control system that allowed genuine maneuverability underwater. She was also stable and relatively easy to handle—at least by the standards of late 19th-century submersibles. There was no periscope, but the conning tower allowed limited above-surface visibility.
Holland and his crew carried out trials near Perth Amboy and the Narrows, often slipping through the harbor like a mechanical sea serpent. In March 1898, she achieved her first successful submerged run. Later that spring, tensions with Spain escalated after the sinking of USS Maine in Havana harbor. Though Holland VI was still experimental, her potential as a stealth attack vessel was suddenly harder to dismiss. Navy observers began attending her trials.
On November 12, 1898, the vessel performed for a formal Navy Board of Inspection led by Captain Frederick Rodgers and including the formidable Captain “Fighting Bob” Evans. Holland VI submerged, ran underwater, fired a torpedo, and returned safely to the surface. Though some concerns remained—particularly regarding her tendency to yaw while submerged—the board recommended further consideration. Holland’s submarine had proven itself.
After additional demonstrations and political negotiations, the Navy agreed to purchase the vessel for $150,000 on April 11, 1900. She was renamed USS Holland, commissioned on October 12 of that year under the command of Lieutenant Harry H. Caldwell. The Navy also placed orders for seven additional submarines based on her design, which would become the A-class boats—the United States’ first fleet of submarines.
USS Holland served as a training and experimental craft, operating out of Annapolis and Newport. She trained cadets, tested systems, and collected performance data. She completed a 166-mile surface voyage from Annapolis to Norfolk in 1901, a feat that silenced many skeptics. Though she was decommissioned in 1905 and struck from the Navy Register in 1910, her influence would ripple through every American submarine that followed. Her hull designation, SS-1, was not assigned until 1920 when the Navy implemented its modern classification system.
As for John Holland, his victory was bittersweet. While the Navy accepted his design, he was gradually sidelined from the company he built. Isaac Rice and other financiers took control of the business, and Holland, increasingly isolated and embittered, resigned from the board in 1904. He died in Newark, New Jersey, in 1914, largely unrecognized and outlived by the machines he had created. Today, his remains rest in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, not far from where his first prototypes dove into the dark waters of the Passaic River.
April 11 is not just a birthday. It is a declaration that beneath the steel decks of surface ships, another world exists—a world of silent warriors, of torpedoes that strike from nowhere, and of sailors who train not for glory, but for precision. The legacy of USS Holland is not found only in museums or brass plaques, but in the engineering DNA of every American submarine since.
From World War I’s early patrols to World War II’s wolfpack battles in the Pacific, from the Cold War’s nuclear cat-and-mouse games to today’s fast-attack platforms prowling beneath contested waters, the heart of the U.S. submarine force beats with the determination of a sickly Irish teacher who refused to take no for an answer. The technological DNA of Holland VI—twin propulsion, diving planes, torpedo armament, and centralized control—remains embedded in the design of every modern undersea vessel. So too does its spirit: quiet, persistent, innovative.
The boat itself was sold for scrap in 1913. But her legacy could not be melted down. Her keel laid the foundation of the Silent Service. Her hull bore the weight of skepticism and bore it away beneath the surface. And her story continues in the lives of every submariner who has ever stood a watch, held a depth beneath the waves, or whispered a prayer before diving deep.
In the end, the Navy did not discover Holland. Holland discovered the Navy. And he gave it a gift that continues to run silent and run deep.
Dave Bowman is the Past Commander and the current Base Historian of the USSVI Bremerton Base. He qualified submarines on November 18, 1984 aboard USS Michigan SSBN-727(G) on Patrol 5. He made six patrols aboard USS Michigan and later was a Navy Instructor at the Naval Guided Missiles School in Damn Neck, VA. He left the Navy in 1991 to pursue a career in Talk Radio and podcasting.
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