UB-14 was ordered in October 1914 and was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen in November. UB-14 was a little under in length and displaced between , depending on whether surfaced or submerged. She carried two torpedoes for her two bow torpedo tubes and was also armed with a deck-mounted machine gun. UB-14 was broken into sections and shipped by rail to the Austrian port Pola for reassembly. She was launched and commissioned in March 1915 as SM UB-14 in the German Imperial Navy under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Heino von Heimburg.