USS Grampus (SS-4)
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USS Grampus in dry dock at Mare Island, 1906
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| History | |
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| Name: | USS Grampus |
| Builder: | Union Iron Works, San Francisco |
| Laid down: | 10 December 1900 |
| Launched: | 31 July 1902 |
| Commissioned: | 28 May 1903 |
| Decommissioned: | 25 July 1921 |
| Struck: | 16 January 1922 |
| Fate: | Sunk as target |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Plunger-class submarine |
| Displacement: | 107 long tons (109 t) |
| Length: | 63 ft 10 in (19.46 m) |
| Beam: | 11 ft 11 in (3.63 m) |
| Draft: | 10 ft 7 in (3.23 m) |
| Speed: |
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| Complement: | 7 officers and men |
| Armament: | 1 × 18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tube |
USS Grampus (SS-4), a Plunger-class submarine later named A-3, was the fourth ship of the United States Navy to be named for two members of the dolphin family (Delphinidae): Grampus griseus, also known as Risso's dolphin, and Orcinus orca, also known as the killer whale.
Her keel was laid down on 10 December 1900 at San Francisco, California, by Union Iron Works, a subcontractor for the Holland Torpedo Boat Company of New York City. She was launched on 31 July 1902 sponsored by Mrs. Marley F. Hay, wife of the Superintendent of Construction at Union Iron Works.
"Owing to the breaking of the ribbon by which the bottle of wine was suspended, the christening did not go off with the greatest smoothness and the steel fish of the ocean came near starting out with a hoodoo upon her. The bottle, as it fell to the platform, was quickly grasped again and hurled after the fast-gliding boat, so she escaped becoming a thing to be shunned by superstitious seamen."
The boat was commissioned at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 28 May 1903 with Lieutenant Arthur MacArthur III, the older brother of future General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, in command.
Over the next three and a half years, Grampus operated out of the San Francisco, California, area, principally in training and experimental work. On 18 April 1906, men from her crew participated in relief efforts which followed the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Decommissioned at Mare Island on 28 November, Grampus remained inactive until recommissioned on 13 June 1908. Subsequently assigned to the First Submarine Division, Pacific Torpedo Flotilla, in January 1910, and to the Pacific Fleet in March 1911, the submarine torpedo boat operated locally off the California coast until assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet on 28 June 1912. Toward the end of this period of active service, on 17 November 1911, Grampus was renamed A-3.
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