General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) is a subsidiary of General Dynamics Corporation. It has been the primary builder of submarines for the United States Navy for more than 100 years. The company's main facilities are a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, a hull-fabrication and outfitting facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and a design and engineering facility in New London, Connecticut. History The company was founded in 1899 by Isaac Rice as the Electric Boat Company to build John Philip Holland's submersible ship designs, which were developed at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Holland VI was the first submarine that this shipyard built, which became when it was commissioned into the United States Navy on April 11, 1900—the first submarine to be officially commissioned. The success of Holland VI created a demand for follow-up models (A class or ) that began with the prototype submersible Fulton built at Electric Boat. Some foreign navies were interested in John Holland's latest submarine designs, and so purchased the rights to build them under licensing contracts through the company; these included the United Kingdom's Royal Navy, the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Imperial Russian Navy, and the Royal Netherlands Navy. From 1907 to 1925 Electric Boat designed submarines for the Navy and subcontracted their construction to the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts and other shipyards. During this era, the company designed submarines of the B, C, D, E, K, L, M, N, AA-1, O, R, and S classes. During the World War I era, the company and its subsidiaries (notably the Electric Launch Company, or Elco) built 85 submarines via subcontractors and 722 submarine chasers for the US Navy, and 580 80-foot motor launches for the British Royal Navy. Interwar After the war, the US Navy did not order another submarine from Electric Boat until in 1931. Cuttlefish was the first submarine built at EB's plant in Groton, Connecticut which has ever since been its primary submarine manufacturing facility. EB was the lead yard for several classes of submarines (Perch, Salmon, Sargo, Tambor, Gar, Mackerel and Gato) prior to World War II. Starting in the early 1930s, EB was one of only two major US submarine manufacturers (the other being the Portsmouth Navy Yard) until the late 1950s. Three other yards (Manitowoc, Mare Island, and Cramp) produced submarines only during World War II. Several other yards including Mare Island built submarines in