Posted: 03/01/2014
USS Plunger, a 107-ton Holland-type submarine built at Elizabethport, New Jersey, was commissioned in September 1903. She served on experimental torpedo duties at Newport, Rhode Island, until 1905. In August of that year Plunger was visited by President Theodore Roosevelt, who thus became the first U.S. Chief Executive to dive in a submarine. Out of commission from November 1905 until February 1907, Plunger was then based at the New York Navy Yard for two years and, beginning in October 1909, operated out of the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina. She was a unit of the Reserve Torpedo Flotilla after April 1910. The submarine was renamed A-1 in November 1911 and stricken from the Navy list in February 1913. Later used as a target, her hulk was sold for scrapping in January 1922.