Later Service
Decommissioned on 3 November 1905, Plunger remained inactive until she was recommissioned on 23 February 1907. On 3 May 1909, Ensign Chester Nimitz, the future fleet admiral who would say he considered the submarines of the time "a cross between a Jules Verne fantasy and a humpbacked whale", assumed command of Plunger. That September, the submarine torpedo boat visited New York City to take part in the Hudson-Fulton celebrations.
Reassigned to the Charleston Navy Yard, Plunger reached that port on 24 October and moored alongside the gunboat Castine, the parent ship for the Atlantic Submarine Fleet. Shortly thereafter, Castine's medical officer, Assistant Surgeon Micajah Boland, inspected Plunger and two other submarine torpedo boats. His report graphically described living conditions on these boats. He found "their sanitary condition to be far from satisfactory, notwithstanding the fact that they had been at sea only about forty-five hours."
Plunger was renamed A-1 on 17 November 1911. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 24 February 1913.
By 1916, A-1 had been authorized for use as an "experimental target, designated 'Target E'". She was ultimately hoisted on board the hulk of the former monitor Puritan and authorized for sale in 1921, on an "as is, where is" basis. She was sold for scrapping on 26 January 1922.
Read more about this topic: USS Plunger (SS-2)
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