USS Bridgeport (AD-10) - Interwar Period

Interwar Period

After the end of hostilities, Bridgeport joined in the salute to President Woodrow Wilson when he arrived at Brest on 13 December 1918 on board the transport George Washington.

Underway for England on the afternoon of 15 October 1919, Bridgeport arrived at Portland the following day and remained there until she sailed for New York on 26 October. En route to the United States on 3 November, the destroyer tender spotted the American merchant steamer SS Avondale with her engineering plant disabled, and sent over a repair party. Various machinery components were repaired in the tender's shops as Bridgeport's boat shuttled between the two ships carrying parts and workmen. By the following afternoon, Avondale was able to proceed under her own power, and the two ships parted company. Bridgeport reached the New York Navy Yard on 11 November and remained there into 1920.

Attached to Destroyer Squadron 3, Flotilla 2, Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet, Bridgeport departed New York on 6 February for Guantanamo Bay, where the fleet concentrated for winter maneuvers. Underway for Kingston, Jamaica, on 17 February, she remained there until 24 February. During the destroyer force's departure from Kingston, Dixie ran aground. Bridgeport stood in to assist her and succeeded in working Dixie out of her predicament. They reached Guantanamo Bay on 26 February. A month later, Bridgeport helped another grounded ship. She left Guantanamo Bay on 26 March bound for Guacanayabo near Manzanillo. On 27 March, the destroyer tender encountered the British merchantman SS Crostafels that had run aground off Ceiba Bank and set about to assist her in getting off the bank. Schenck joined in the effort not long thereafter, and together the two American warships had Crostafels afloat again.

After visiting Guacanayabo and Cienfuegos late in March and early in April, Bridgeport moved to Manzanillo and remained nearby until setting sail for New York on 24 April. She arrived at New York on 30 April for several days of upkeep and liberty before moving on to her summer base. On 17 May, she sailed for Newport, Rhode Island, the summer base for the destroyer squadrons, and arrived there the following day to tend the destroyers of Flotilla 2.

Departing Newport on 31 May, Bridgeport arrived at the Boston Navy Yard the next day and remained there through July, undergoing repairs and alterations. During this refit, on 17 July 1920, she received the designation AD-10 when the Navy adopted the alphanumeric system of hull classification and identification. Her battery underwent its third change when her 5-inch (127 mm) guns were upgraded from the 40-caliber to the 51-caliber model. Bridgeport remained in the yard until 20 August, when she returned to Newport. Back at New York at the end of the month, Bridgeport received orders to join in the rescue effort for submarine S-5 that had sunk off the Delaware capes during post-overhaul trials. The destroyer tender left the anchorage off Tompkinsville late on 2 September and reached the scene late the following morning. Bridgeport remained in the vicinity until late the next day when she headed back to New York to reembark some of her crewmen left behind as a result of her hasty departure.

Bridgeport sailed for Charleston on 8 September, and reached that port on 14 September to serve the destroyers based there. The ship remained at Charleston into the early part of May 1921 when she sailed for New York, accompanying the fleet's destroyers northward to the Narragansett Bay operating areas. After a visit to New York City from 14 to 31 May 1921, Bridgeport arrived at Newport on 1 June and remained there, tending destroyers, into late September. She then spent the first half of October at the New York Navy Yard. Returning to Charleston on 15 October, Bridgeport worked there into late December, when she returned to the New York Navy Yard for the rest of 1921.

The year 1922 found Bridgeport continuing her service on the East Coast, mostly between Narragansett Bay and Hampton Roads, tending destroyers and assisting in destroyer target practices on the Southern Drill Grounds off the Virginia Capes. She visited the city for which she was named, Bridgeport, Connecticut, between 25 and 30 October. After a busy year's operations, she arrived at the Boston Navy Yard on 21 November 1922 and remained there into January 1923.

Later that month, Bridgeport returned to Cuban waters, and served as reference vessel for torpedo-firing exercises off Manzanillo early in February. After that mission, she transited the Panama Canal on 13 February to take part in Fleet Problem I as a "radio-relay vessel." That assignment occupied her through 21 February, and she entered Panama Bay on 23 February. She lay anchored there through the end of March and was among the ships reviewed by Admiral Robert E. Coontz, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the Honorable Edwin C. Denby, the Secretary of the Navy, who were embarked in the transport Henderson at the time. Retransiting the canal on 26 March, Bridgeport returned to Guantanamo Bay on 30 March and then headed northward, returning to Newport on 26 April.

From Narragansett Bay, Bridgeport returned to the Boston Navy Yard for post-deployment upkeep; while moored there, the ship conducted observances that followed the death of President Warren G. Harding on 2 August. Her officers and men assembled on the boat deck, aft, and after the ship's band had played two hymns—"Lead, Kindly Light," and "Nearer, My God, to Thee"—observed a moment of silence before resuming their work.

For the rest of the year, Bridgeport supported the fleet's destroyer forces, interspersing her time at Hampton Roads and on the Southern Drill Grounds with visits to Bridgeport (25 to 28 October) and Baltimore (10 to 11 November). She reached the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 18 November, and remained there through the end of 1923. Underway south on 3 January 1924, Bridgeport paused briefly at Hampton Roads the next day before pushing on toward Panama. She arrived in Chiriquí lagoon, Panama on 12 January and participated in a search for a lost seaplane from Langley. While there, the destroyer tender also changed the starboard propeller of Childs.

Standing out of Limon Bay, Panama on 25 January, Bridgeport visited Culebra, Puerto Rico, and Kingston, Jamaica, before she served as a reference vessel for torpedo practices being conducted by destroyers off Culebra. She departed Kingston late in April and steamed via Guantanamo Bay to New York. Returning to the Southern Drill Grounds on 20 May, the tender transferred five motor sailors and two motor whaleboats to the minesweeper Vireo, for use as tows and umpire boats for the torpedo practices fired by Putnam, Bruce, and Case. Bridgeport supported the destroyers' evolutions through mid-June.

The ship visited New York from 20 to 29 June before continuing on to Boston. She reached the Boston Navy Yard on 30 June and was decommissioned there one hour into the afternoon watch on 3 November 1924. Bridgeport remained inactive for almost two decades.