USS Mc Dougal (DD-54) - Early Career

Early Career

USS McDougal was commissioned into the United States Navy on 16 June 1914 at Boston under the temporary command of Lieutenant, junior grade, John H. Hoover; Lieutenant Commander Leigh C. Palmer assumed command on 27 July. After a shakedown cruise, McDougal began duty with the Torpedo Flotilla, Atlantic Fleet. Prior to America’s entry into World War I, she operated out of New York and Newport, Rhode Island, and carried out maneuvers and tactical exercises along the east coast.

In early April 1915, McDougal and destroyer Parker were temporarily assigned to patrol near the New York Quarantine Station. There were concerns by Dudley Field Malone, the local port collector, that some of the interned German steamships at New York might try to slip out during a heavy snowstorm. While onboard on McDougal during one of these patrols, Malone discovered what The New York Times termed a "widespread conspiracy" intended to supply British warships outside of U.S. territorial waters, in violation of the American neutrality in World War I.

She cruised to the Caribbean and took part in fleet war games between January and May 1916, and in addition served intermittently with the Neutrality patrol. In May, she was declared the "champion smokeless vessel" of the U.S. Navy by The Christian Science Monitor after she was able to steam at 30 knots (56 km/h) for four hours without betraying her position by smoke. In June, The Washington Post reported that she was damaged during maneuvers off Cape Ann, and had to put in to the Boston Navy Yard for leak repairs.

At 05:30 on Sunday, 8 October 1916, wireless reports came in of a German submarine stopping ships near the Lightship Nantucket, off the eastern end of Long Island. After an SOS from the British steamer West Point was received at about 12:30, Rear Admiral Albert Gleaves ordered McDougal and other destroyers at Newport to attend to survivors. According to a firsthand account of the events by Nathan Levy, a quartermaster on McDougal, published on 22 October in The New York Times, the destroyer steamed the 100 nautical miles (190 km) distance to the lightship in three-and-a-half hours, arriving after German submarine U-53 had stopped the Holland America Line cargo ship Blommersdijk and the British passenger ship Stephano. As Rose had done with three other ships U-53 had sunk earlier in the day, he gave passengers and crew aboard Blommersdijk and Stephano adequate time to abandon the ships. After sinking Blommersdijk with two torpedoes, Rose focused his attention on Stephano, having to signal McDougal and Benham to ask that the two destroyers move farther away so that he could sink the British ship. Six American destroyers witnessed U-53 sink the liner with her deck gun. In total, 226 survivors from U-53's five victims were rescued by the destroyer flotilla; McDougal rescued 6 of Blommersdijk's men.

McDougal returned to the Caribbean for exercises during the first three months of 1917, and then returned to New York and Newport to prepare for distant service.