Shark's keel was laid at the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut, on 24 October 1933. She was a Porpoise-class submarine, one of the boats designed to extend American undersea reach across the vast Pacific. Launched on 21 May 1935 and sponsored by twelve-year-old Ruth Ellen Lonergan, daughter of Connecticut Senator Augustine Lonergan, she was commissioned on 25 January 1936. After shakedown in the North Atlantic and Caribbean, Shark transited the Panama Canal, arriving in San Diego on 4 March 1937. Eighteen months of training exercises followed before an overhaul at Mare Island Navy Yard and reassignment to Pearl Harbor's Submarine Squadron 4. Two years of Hawaiian operations prepared her for what came next: in December 1940, she sailed for Manila to join the Asiatic Fleet.

Shark was at sea when the Japanese bombed Manila on 10 December 1941, one day after she departed. For the next week she patrolled Tayabas Bay before returning to Manila to embark Admiral Thomas C. Hart, Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic Fleet, for transport to Soerabaja, Java. The early weeks of the Pacific War were chaotic for American submarine forces -- too few boats, unreliable torpedoes, and an enemy advancing with terrifying speed. On 6 January 1942, Shark narrowly avoided a torpedo from a Japanese submarine. Days later she was ordered to Ambon Island, where invasion was expected, then redirected to the Molucca Passage to cover the approaches east of Lifamatola and Bangka Strait.

On 2 February 1942, Shark reported to Soerabaja that she had been depth-charged ten nautical miles off Tifore Island and had failed to sink a Japanese vessel during a torpedo attack. Five days later came the message about the cargo ship. Captain Wilkes admonished the skipper. On 8 February, headquarters ordered Shark to proceed to Makassar Strait and requested a status report. No reply came. The Navy waited a month before accepting what the silence meant. On 7 March she was declared presumed lost, cause unknown. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 24 June 1942.

After the war, Japanese records offered fragments that may explain Shark's fate. On 11 February 1942, at 1:37 in the morning, the Japanese destroyer Yamakaze opened fire with her five-inch guns on a surfaced submarine in the area where Shark was operating. The submarine sank. Yamakaze's crew reported hearing voices in the water -- survivors calling out in the darkness of the Molucca Sea. No attempt was made to rescue them. Whether those voices belonged to Shark's crew cannot be confirmed with certainty, but the timing and location fit. What is certain is that every person aboard Shark died in the waters between Halmahera and the small volcanic islands of North Maluku, in the opening weeks of a war that would eventually claim 52 American submarines and more than 3,500 submariners.