USS Vermont (BB-20) - World War I

World War I

Over the next 2½ years, Vermont maintained her schedule of operations off the eastern seaboard of the United States, ranging from Newport to Guantánamo Bay, before she lay in reserve at Philadelphia from 1 October – 21 November. Vermont subsequently supported the Marine Corps Expeditionary Force in Haiti from 29 November 1916 – 6 February 1917 and then conducted battle practices out of Guantánamo Bay. She ultimately returned to Norfolk on 29 March.

On 4 April, Vermont entered the Philadelphia Navy Yard for repairs. Two days later, the United States declared war on Germany. The battleship emerged from the yard on 26 August and sailed for Hampton Roads for duty as an engineering training ship in the Chesapeake Bay region. She performed that vital function for almost the entire duration of hostilities, completing the assignment on 4 November 1918, a week before the armistice stilled the guns of World War I.

Her service as a training ship during the conflict had been broken once in the spring of 1918, when she received the body of the late Chilean ambassador to the United States on 28 May, embarked the American Ambassador to Chile—the Honorable J. H. Shea—on 3 June, and got underway from Norfolk later that day. The battleship transited the Panama Canal on 10 June, touched at Port Tongoy, Chile on 24 June, and arrived at Valparaíso on the morning of 27 June.

There, the late ambassador's remains were accompanied ashore by Admiral William B. Caperton and Ambassador Shea. Departing that port on 2 July, Vermont visited Callao, Peru on 7 July, before retransiting the Panama Canal and returning to her base in the York River.