Although Submarine Boats Number 1-5 (better known as the Holland Class after their designer John P Holland) were the first boats to be built for the Royal Navy at Barrow, no 'Barrow Built' submarine history would be complete without briefly mentioning the earliest submarines ever to emerge from Barrow shipyard which were built in 1886/7 for export, on the instructions of Thorsten Nordenfelt, a Swedish industrialist and gunmaker.
The first submarine, Nordenfelt II, was a steam-driven boat, 100 feet long and displacing 160 tons. Launched on April 14th 1886, she was an improved version of an earlier submarine built by Nordenfelt in Stockholm in 1982 and based on the Resurgam,
