Latest Updates
From PigBoats.COM
This page will display the most recent additions to the site, arranged by date. Click on the link below each picture to be taken to the page where it resides. You may have to scroll to find the newest picture. Please note that minor updates to captions and other text is an ongoing effort and will not be listed here. Enjoy!


June 18, 2025
Today we added photos from near the end of the pigboat era, with Salmon, Sargo, and Mackerel highlighted. We uploaded a 2023 review of our book A Good and Favorable Wind from The Day news service in Connecticut. Also from The Day is an article concerning the discovery of the wreck site of Simon Lake's submarine Defender in 2023. A link for that article is provided here.
Our colleagues at Navsource Naval History have just come through a rough patch with their service provider and have reconfigured the URL for the site as Navsource.net. Hopefully this will be the start of a long stable period for this invaluable naval history website. Note that with the change in the URL, here at PigBoats.COM have to go through all of our hyperlinks and reset them. We have a lot of them here, so if you run across a dead Navsource link be advised it will take a while to find and reconfigure them. It is a work-in-progress for now. We are glad that Navsource is back up and running!
June 5, 2025
We are pleased to have some great photos taken by the submersible Alvin and AUV Sentry from the February 2025 Woods Hole expedition to the wreck of the USS F-1 off La Jolla, California. In addition, we have added several new photos of the conversion work done to S-1 so that she could carry out the Navy's only tests with launching an airplane from a submarine. So many images were added to the S-1 page that we had to rearrange it and add a table of contents. More S-1 images will follow in a future update. Also, webmaster David Johnston recently participated in a briefing at the Naval History & Heritage Command HQ in Washington, DC concerning The USS Dorado Project. RDML Sam Cox, the NHHC director, had a favorable review of the presentation, and encouraged the project to push forward. There will be several new developments concerning the project over the summer and we will keep you informed!
May 23, 2025
Another update this week, as I will be out of town in Washington, DC giving a presentation on The Dorado Project at the Naval History & Heritage Command. Over the last two weeks we were gifted with a group of photos from historian and master model maker Randy Biddle, showcasing his USS Grampus (aka A-3) model. Randy also contributed an excellent article he wrote in 1981 concerning the history of the Grampus. See that article at this link. In addition, Robert Porterfield sent us a very interesting oral history concerning the career of Harry Hoffman, a crewman from the USS N-1 in WW I. Bob compiled the history from a series of letters that Harry sent home. It is a fascinating first-person look into life on one of the early pigboats. That history can be read here.
May 19, 2025
May 2, 2025
An R-boat update today! We are also working with two other historians who will be contributing research articles on submarine engines and an oral history from a crewmember of N-1. Those should be coming over the next several weeks. Check back often!
April 18, 2025
Fellow historian and researcher Darryl Baker contributed over 13 photographs and newspaper clippings that highlighted the shift in submarine operations in Hawaii in late 1915 following the F-4 disaster. The photo sets noted above will highlight the coming of the K-class boats and the return of the remaining F-class boats to California. Darryl also contributed a series of newspaper clippings that give contemporary accounts of this major shift in Pacific Fleet submarine operations. These photos all come courtesy of the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum. Please take the time to visit their site.
Page created by:
Ric Hedman & David Johnston
1999 - 2023 - PigBoats.COM©
Mountlake Terrace, WA, Norfolk, VA
webmaster@pigboats.com