The Karp Class were a group of submarines built by Krupp

Krupp

The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...

 Germaniawerft for the Imperial Russian Navy

Imperial Russian Navy

The Imperial Russian Navy refers to the Tsarist fleets prior to the February Revolution.-First Romanovs:Under Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, construction of the first three-masted ship, actually built within Russia, was completed in 1636. It was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein...

. The boats were ordered in the 1904 emergency programme as a result of the Russo-Japanese War

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...

. The design was a twin hull type with 7 ballast tanks and a 16 fathom (96 feet) diving limit. The boats were delivered late for the war and transferred to the Black Sea Fleet

Black Sea Fleet

The Black Sea Fleet is a large operational-strategic sub-unit of the Russian Navy, operating in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea since the late 18th century. It is based in various harbors of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov....

 by rail in 1908. The design served as the prototype for the first German U-boat, U-1, which was commissioned into the Imperial German Navy on 14 December 1906. The U-1 has been preserved, and is currently on display at the Deutsches Museum

Deutsches Museum

The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of technology and science, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association...

 in Munich.

Kambala sank 1909. The reason and location of this sinking is unclear. Some reports have the submarine sinking near Kronstadt

Kronstadt

Kronstadt , also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt |crown]]" and Stadt for "city"); is a municipal town in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia, located on Kotlin Island, west of Saint Petersburg proper near the head of the Gulf of Finland. Population: It is also...

 due to an erroneously opened valve while others have her sinking in an accidental collision with Rostislav near Sevastopol

Sevastopol

Sevastopol is a city on rights of administrative division of Ukraine, located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea peninsula. It has a population of 342,451 . Sevastopol is the second largest port in Ukraine, after the Port of Odessa....

. It has even been suggested that she sank twice first near Kronstadt then after being salvaged was sunk again near Sevastopol.
In 1918 Karp and Karas were transferred to the Ukrainian State Navy.

Ships

Ship	Launched	fate
Karp Карп - Carp	1907	Decommissioned in 1917. Scuttled in Sevastopol on 26 April 1919.
Kambala Камбала - Flounder	1907	Sunk in collision with the battleship , 11 June 1909.
Karas Карась - Crucian carp	1907	Decommissioned in 1917. Scuttled in Sevastopol on 26 April 1919.