Early Career
USS Wadsworth was commissioned into the United States Navy at the Boston Navy Yard on 23 July 1915 under the command of Lieutenant Commander Joseph K. Taussig. After trials and torpedo firing drills out of Newport, Rhode Island, the destroyer took up duty off the New England coast line in October. Her duty included patrols to insure America's neutrality vis-a-vis the year-old European war. On 7 January 1916, she departed Provincetown, Massachusetts, to join in the annual Fleet maneuvers in the Caribbean. After a stop at Norfolk, Virginia, she reached the West Indies at Culebra Island on 15 January and began a three-month round of war games, drills, and exercises. During her stay in the Caribbean, she visited Guantanamo Bay, Guacanayabo Bay, Manzanillo, and Santiago — all in Cuba. On 10 April, she left Guantanamo Bay to steam north, stopped at New York for a five-week stay, and returned to Newport on 21 May. Wadsworth resumed operations along the New England coast, and the succeeding year passed in much the same way as had its predecessor — summer operations along the northeastern coast followed by Fleet maneuvers in the Caribbean.
At the completion of her second round of winter Fleet maneuvers in the spring of 1917, Wadsworth returned north as far as Hampton Roads. As America's entry into World War I approached, she and her sister destroyers began patrolling the Norfolk–Yorktown area to protect the naval bases and ships there against potential incursions by German submarines.
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