United States Navy Career
USS Jacob Jones was commissioned into the United States Navy on 10 February 1916 under the command of Lieutenant Commander William S. Pye. Following her commissioning, Jacob Jones conducted training exercises off the New England coast, and then entered the Philadelphia Navy Yard for repairs. Upon the United States' entry into World War I on 6 April 1917, Jacob Jones patrolled off the coast of Virginia. She sailed from Boston for Europe on 7 May with a group of destroyers that included Cassin, and arrived at Queenstown, Ireland, on 17 May.
Jacob Jones' duties at Queenstown involved patrolling and escorting convoys in the Irish Sea and making occasional rescues of survivors of sunken ships. On 8 July, Valetta was torpedoed by German submarine U-87 some 120 nautical miles (220 km) west of Fastnet Rock; Jacob Jones arrived on the scene and picked up 44 survivors of the British steamship. While escorting British steamship Dafila two weeks later, lookouts on Jacob Jones sighted a periscope, but before the destroyer could make an attack on the submarine, U-45 torpedoed and sank the steamship. Jacob Jones was able to take on 26 of Dafila's 28-member crew after the ship went down.
On 19 October, the British Armed merchant cruiser Orama and ten destroyers, including Jacob Jones, were escorting an eastbound convoy of twenty steamers, when German submarine U-62 surfaced in the midst of the group. The submarine launched its only remaining torpedo at Orama, sinking that vessel. While sister ship Conyngham saw and depth charged U-62 (to no avail), Jacob Jones turned her attentions to rescuing Orama's survivors, gathering 309.
Read more about this topic: USS Jacob Jones (DD-61)
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, navy and/or career:
“In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“In the United States there is more space where nobody is is than where anybody is.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)