In 1914 Pearl Harbor was still just an unimproved harbor. The Navy had yet to begin its development. Four submarines, the F-1, F-2, F-3 and F-4 were towed from San Francisco to Honolulu where the boats were to be stationed at the foot of Richards Street, next to Pier 5. The boats had hardly begun to operate from their new harbor, when F-4, under the command of Lieutenant Alfred Ede, sank in 50 fathoms of water at the harbor entrance. The little craft simply failed to surface at the designated time. There was no warning of impending difficulty, but surface craft found an oil slick and minor debris about two miles off the harbor entrance.

F-4 was only 400 tons with a crew of 21 men and had a test depth of 200 feet. The depth of the water at the location of the sunken submarine was 305 feet, but charts showed that the boat rested on a steep shelf that plummeted into deep water to seaward. The maximum diver's depth in 1914 was about 200 feet, but since the F-4's sinking was discovered almost immediately, the Navy hoped that some of the crew might still be alive. Chief Gunner's Mates Evans and Agraz exceeded the limits of the time, found the bottom, but could not locate the boat. Two tugs, the Navajo and Intrepid, swung wire rope over their sides and lowered the cable down to the sea floor. They then dragged the line, hoping to snare the boat and pull it to shallower depths. Repeated attempts failed to snare the submarine, although the hull was thought to have been struck.

A dredging barge was pulled to the scene and its cables trapped the F-4. At the same time, the two tugs managed to sling their cable under the boat. While the tugs put a lateral strain on the boat, the dredge winched in on its centerline cable. The strain was too great on the dredge's cable which parted and whipped onto the deck injuring several men. So much time elapsed that further efforts to rescue possible surviving crew members were abandoned. Operations of the other three F type boats were restricted to surface work.

Lieutenant Commander Julius Furer organized a salvage operation that included bringing divers from New York and Dr. George French from San Francisco. These experts arrived in April of 1915. At the same time various equipment from private companies was borrowed and inflatable pontoons were constructed. Furer's intent was to lift the boat to successive shallower depths in small increments. The divers found the boat, secured the cables and by inflating the pontoons the F-4 was slowly moved up the incline. When it rested in the harbor at a depth of 48 feet, the pontoons were again inflated. This brought the boat up to 25 feet, the depth that was shallow enough for it to be transferred into Honolulu's dry-dock.

The dock was drained, the boat was drained and bodies of the crew were extricated. The Navy then conducted a thorough inspection of the pressure hull to determine the cause of the sinking. It did not take long to discover corroded metal around rivet holes under the battery compartment. It was concluded that during operations, battery acid had spilled beneath the cells and had slowly eaten away the most vulnerable pressure hull points. Both rivet shanks and elongated holes had been seriously compromised. When F-4 had reached a depth near its test depth, the hull plate seam beneath the battery compartment had split open with accompanying catastrophic flooding. All hands died immediately from compression/flooding or from chlorine gas poisoning moments later.

In 1929, Chief Petty Officer Frank Crilley, diver, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism in trying to rescue possible F-4 survivors. The sinking of the F-4 was America's first submarine disaster and much was learned about the dangers of riveted hull construction and methods of raising a sunken submarine. The pontoon system was later used in the raising of the USS Squalus (SS-192).