Recommissioning
She remained inactive at New York until recommissioned on 8 March 1902. On the 25th, she departed New York bound for Baltimore, Maryland, where she arrived two days later. At Baltimore, Brutus loaded cargo, stores, and coal for her own bunkers. On 16 April, the collier put to sea on the long voyage around Cape Horn to Samoa, in the South Pacific. She made stops at San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Montevideo, Uruguay, and arrived in Tutuila on 11 July. She remained there exactly one month, heading back the way she came on 11 August. After repeating her stops at Montevideo and San Juan, she entered Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 27 October. Except for one round-trip voyage to Culebra Island near Puerto Rico between 5 and 19 December, Brutus operated in the Chesapeake Bay area until late January 1903. Between 24 January and 18 April 1903, she cruised in the West Indies and along the coast of Central America returning to Hampton Roads on 18 April.
In the middle of 1903, Brutus was assigned to the Asiatic Fleet. Worked by a merchant crew made up of Chinese nationals, she carried coal to various units of the Navy's squadron in the Orient. Late in 1905, she returned to the east coast of the United States to help perform a monumental task. On 28 December 1905, she steamed out of Chesapeake Bay in company with USS Glacier and USS Caesar towing the USS Dewey drydock to Manila. Steaming across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, they transited the Suez Canal between 27 April and 1 May 1906. They resumed the voyage early in May and arrived at Olongapo, Luzon, on 10 July. Thereupon, Brutus resumed her former duties as collier to the Asiatic Fleet.
In 1907, the collier returned to the United States and began operations out of Norfolk, Virginia, in support of the Atlantic Fleet. Except for two periods in reserve at the Norfolk Navy Yard, 13 May 1908 to 2 January 1909 and 20 May to 2 July 1912, and a resupply voyage to the Mediterranean Sea in 1915, that employment occupied her time until the spring of 1916. In April 1916, Brutus transferred to the Pacific Fleet and operated from the Mare Island Navy Yard. When the United States entered World War I on 6 April 1917, her merchant crew was taken into the service as members of the United States Naval Reserve Forces. Soon thereafter on 24 April, she ran aground on Cerros Island in a heavy fog. She was refloated 10 days later and was towed to San Diego for temporary repairs. From there, she headed back to the Mare Island Navy Yard where she completed permanent repairs.
She spent the remainder of the war cruising the California and Mexican coast. When the worldwide influenza epidemic struck late in 1918, Brutus loaded supplies and stores and headed for Alaska as part of a Red Cross relief expedition. She returned south from that mission in January 1919. After the war, she was assigned to the Pacific Fleet Train. Early in 1920, the collier voyaged from the west coast to Tutuila, Samoa, carrying coal and supplies to the naval station located there. Later that spring she returned via Hawaii to the west coast and resumed her duties with the Pacific Fleet Train. She remained so employed until decommissioned on 17 August 1921. Her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 29 July 1922, and she was sold to the A. Bercovich Company in Oakland, California.
Read more about this topic: USS Brutus (AC-15)