page_title: USS Wadsworth (DD-60)
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: USS Wadsworth (DD-60) / Early career
caption_attribution_description: English: USS Wadsworth during trials, run 23 south at full speed.
context_page_description: USS Wadsworth was a Tucker-class destroyer built for the United States Navy prior to the American entry into World War I. The ship was the first U.S. Navy vessel named for Alexander Scammel Wadsworth.
  Wadsworth was laid down by the Bath Iron Works of Bath, Maine, in February 1914 and launched in April 1915. The ship was a little more than 315 feet in length, nearly 30 feet abeam, and displaced 1,060 long tons. She was armed with four 4-inch guns and had eight 21 inch torpedo tubes. Wadsworth's geared steam turbine power plant was a successful prototype that greatly influenced U.S. destroyer designs after 1915.
  After her July 1915 commissioning, Wadsworth served on the neutrality patrol off the east coast and in the Caribbean. After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Wadsworth was the flagship of the first U.S. destroyer squadron sent overseas. Patrolling the Irish Sea out of Queenstown, Ireland, Wadsworth reported several encounters with U-boats in the first months overseas. She was transferred to Brest, France, in March 1918, and spent the remainder of the war there.
context_section_description: USS Wadsworth was commissioned into the United States Navy at the Boston Navy Yard on 23 July 1915 under the command of Lieutenant Commander Joseph K. Taussig. After trials and torpedo firing drills out of Newport, Rhode Island, the destroyer took up duty off the New England coast line in October. Her duty included patrols to insure America's neutrality vis-a-vis the year-old European war. On 7 January 1916, she departed Provincetown, Massachusetts, to join in the annual Fleet maneuvers in the Caribbean. After a stop at Norfolk, Virginia, she reached the West Indies at Culebra Island on 15 January and began a three-month round of war games, drills, and exercises. During her stay in the Caribbean, she visited Guantanamo Bay, Guacanayabo Bay, Manzanillo, and Santiago — all in Cuba. On 10 April, she left Guantanamo Bay to steam north, stopped at New York for a five-week stay, and returned to Newport on 21 May. Wadsworth resumed operations along the New England coast, and the succeeding year passed in much the same way as had its predecessor — summer operations along the northeastern coast followed by Fleet maneuvers in the Caribbean.
  At the completion of her second round of winter Fleet maneuvers in the spring of 1917, Wadsworth returned north as far as Hampton Roads. As America's entry into World War I approached, she and her sister destroyers began patrolling the Norfolk–Yorktown area to protect the naval bases and ships there against potential incursions by German submarines.
caption: Wadsworth during trials
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