HMS C17 was a C Class submarine built at Chatham.


The C Class represented the final evolution in the Royal Navy at least, of John Holland's original design, first adopted by the Royal Navy in 1901 with the commissioning of HM Holland Boat No 1. They were significant in a number of other ways too. They were the first British submarines to feature a set of forward hydroplanes, giving better control. They were the last submarines in the Royal Navy to be powered by Petrol engines. The ordering of the C Class submarines also brought about the end of the monopoly in submarine construction previously enjoyed by Vickers-Armstrong's Barrow-in-Furness shipyard. The Admiralty had decided that submarines would also be built in Royal Dockyards and Chatham was the yard chosen to build them.


The ordering of HM Submarine C17 started an era of submarine-building at Chatham which, other than a ten year break after the end of the Second World War, would continue for 60-odd years. Not only was HMS C17 the first of many submarines to be built at Chatham, she was the first submarine built in any Royal Dockyard.


She was laid down on No 7 slip on 11th March 1907, was launched into the Medway on 13th August 1908 by Mrs Giffard, the wife of the Admiral Superintendant in Chatham at the time, Vice-Admiral George A Giffard. She fitted out at Chatham and was commissioned on 13th May 1909.


The C Class Submarine:





HM Submarine C17:





On completion, she displaced 287 tons surfaced, 316 tons dived, was 143ft 2" long and 13ft 6" wide across the beam. She was armed with 2 18" torpedo tubes and carried a crew of 16 men. The boat was powered on the surface by a 600 SHP, 16-cylinder Vickers petrol engine and whilst submerged by a 300 SHP electric motor, both geared to a single propeller shaft. She could make 12 knots on the surface and 7 knots submerged. HMS C17 had a range of just over 1,000 miles with her fuel tanks full. Although the class had capacity for a reload torpedo for each tube, spare torpedoes could only be carried at the expense of fuel in order to compensate for their weight. When they went to sea, they generally didn't carry any spare torpedoes in order to maximise their range.


HMS C17 had a relatively quiet career. She was in collision with HMS C16 on 14th July 1909. She spent the First World War carrying out coastal patrols of the North Sea and English Channel based out of Dover, the Humber and Portsmouth. C17 entered the history books when she was the first submarine in the world to carry out a beach reconnaisance, off the Belgian Coast in 1917 to study tidal movements.


In May 1917, she was in collision with the destroyer HMS Lurcher and sank. She was raised and repaired and put back into service.


By the end of the Great War in November 1918, she was obsolete and was sold for scrap on 19th November 1919.