Recalled From Reserve Status
Woodcock remained in reserve at Portsmouth until recommissioned there on 21 February 1924. She then became station ship at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to support U.S. Marine Corps peace-keeping forces there. As such, Woodcock was one of the three Lapwing-class minesweepers re-commissioned for service as gunboats. Her sister-ships, Penguin (AM-33) and Pigeon (AM-47), were sent to the Asiatic Fleet for duty with the Yangtze Patrol.
Outside of yearly return voyages to a navy yard in the United States such as that of Charleston, South Carolina, for repairs and alterations, Woodcock remained in Haitian waters, based on Port-au-Prince, through the spring of 1934. That summer, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to pull the U.S. Marine Corps occupation force – a veritable fixture in Haitian history since August 1916 – out of Haiti, Woodcock took part in that important troop lift. On 15 August 1934, amidst impressive shoreside ceremonies and "most friendly feelings displayed by the populace," Woodcock — in company with Bridge (AF-1), Argonne (AS-10), and U.S. Army transport Chateau Thierry — embarked 79 officers and 747 enlisted men of the 1st Marine Brigade, the last of the occupation troops, and eventually took them back to the United States, thus closing a colorful chapter in U.S. Marine Corps history.
Soon thereafter, the minesweeper — or quasi-gunboat – shifted to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She served as a district craft – occasionally exercising with the fleet during its winter maneuvers and participating in some of the Fleet's amphibious exercises under the aegis of the Commandant, 15th Naval District, through the outbreak of war in Europe in the autumn of 1939.
Read more about this topic: USS Woodcock (AM-14)
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