HMS A7

HMS A7 was an early Royal Navy submarine.

She was a member of Group Two of the first British A-class of submarines (a second, much different A-class submarine appeared towards the end of the Second World War). Like all members of her class, she was built at Vickers Barrow-in-Furness.

She sank in Whitsand Bay, Cornwall on 16 January 1914 with the loss of her crew whilst carrying out dummy torpedo attacks on HMS Onyx (1892) (her tender) and HMS Pygmy. An oil slick was seen and the location marked. Several attempts were made to salvage her over the next month by attaching hausers to the eye-ring on the bow, but her stern was too deeply embedded in the mud and the hausers parted without pulling her out. She lies today where she sank, in about 130 ft of water. In 2001, she was declared as one of 16 wrecks in British waters designated as "Controlled Sites" under the Protection of Military Remains Act by the British Government and which cannot be dived without special permission.