USS Savannah, a 10,800 ton submarine tender, was built at Flensburg, Germany, in 1899 as the commercial freighter Saxonia. The German-flag steamer took refuge at Seattle, Washington, when World War I began in August 1914 and was seized when the United States entered the conflict in April 1917. Soon turned over to the Navy, she was renamed Savannah in June 1917. Following conversion for submarine support purposes, the ship was commissioned in early November 1917 and later received the registry number ID 3015.

Late in 1917 Savannah accompanied three submarines on a voyage from the West Coast to the Atlantic, by way of the Panama Canal. She received additional modifications and, in August 1918, began work as mother ship for a division of "O"-class submarines. During the Fall of 1918 Savannah and her flock of undersea craft crossed the Atlantic to the Azores, where they arrived soon after the 11 November Armistice ended the fighting. They then returned to the United States. In 1919 the submarine tender took part in Atlantic Fleet exercises in the Caribbean.

During the early 1920s Savannah, which was designated AS-8 in July 1920, was built up forward, giving her a "flush-deck" appearance. She continued her submarine support work in the western Atlantic area during the first half of the 1920s, but made at least one Panama Canal transit to the Pacific during this time. She was permanently transferred to the big ocean in mid-decade and thereafter operated along the West Coast and in Hawaiian waters. USS Savannah was decommissioned in December 1926, but remained in reserve at the Puget Sound Navy Yard for almost eight more years. Stricken from the Navy list in June 1934, she was sold that September and returned to commercial service. She was renamed Orbis in 1942 and was scrapped in Japan in 1954.