Name USS Grampus Commissioned 28 May 1903 Struck 16 January 1922 Construction started 10 December 1900 Length 19 m Builder Union Iron Works | Laid down 10 December 1900 Decommissioned 25 July 1921 Fate Sunk as target Launched 31 July 1902 Beam 3.63 m | |
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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.
A-3 remained inactive,at the Puget Sound Navy Yard into 1915. On 16 February 1915, she was hoisted onto the collier Hector, which sailed soon thereafter for the Philippines with A-3 and her sister ship, A-5 (ex-Pike), as deck cargo. Hector arrived at Olongapo, site of the Subic Bay Naval Base, on 26 March, and launched A-3 on 10 April.
Commissioned at Olongapo a week later, on 17 April, A-3 was assigned to the First Submarine Division, Torpedo Flotilla, Asiatic Fleet, and remained in active service with that unit until decommissioned at Cavite on 25 July 1921. During World War I, A-3 patrolled the waters off the entrance to Manila Bay. On 17 July 1920, A-3 was given the hull classification symbol SS-4.
Dismantled and used as a target by ships of the Asiatic Fleet, A-3 was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 16 January 1922.