USS Henley DD-39

The first Henley (DD-39) was launched 3 April 1912 by the Fore River Ship Building Co., Quincy, Mass.; sponsored by Miss Constance Henley Kane, great grandniece and commissioned at Boston 6 December 1912, Lt. Comdr. W. L. Littlefield in command.

After training and shakedown, Henley joined the U.S. Atlantic Torpedo Fleet at Newport, R.I., for a peacetime career of tactical exercises and training maneuvers along the coast from the Caribbean to the North Atlantic. On 22 April 1914 she joined the fleet off Tampico, Mexico, to protect American citizens and property in the face of revolution in that country. During this period Henley also saw duty transporting refugees and supplies. What with war in Europe that fall, she began Neutrality Patrol along the coast and checked belligerent vessels in American ports.

When America entered the war in April 1917, Henley continued patrol along the coast and also escorted fuel ships to the destroyers guarding America's first troop convoy 13 June. For the remainder of the war Henley performed convoy duty along the coast and carried out antisubmarine patrol off New York harbor. Henley put in at the Philadelphia Navy Yard 22 December 1918 and decommissioned there 12 December 1919. Transferred to the Coast Guard 16 May 1924, she returned to the Navy 8 May 1931 and sold for scrap to Michael Flynn Inc. of Brooklyn 2 August 1934.

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