The second USS Bainbridge was the first destroyer, also called "Torpedo-boat destroyers", in the United States Navy and the lead ship of the . She was named for William Bainbridge. Bainbridge was commissioned 12 February 1903. She served in the Asiatic Fleet before World War I and served in patrol and convoy duty during the war. She was decommissioned 3 July 1919.
Construction Bainbridge was laid down on 15 August 1899, by Neafie and Levy Ship and Engine Building Company at their shipyard in Philadelphia, as one of nine ships built to a design by the US Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair. Although the name-ship of her class, Bainbridge was not the first ship of the class to be laid down or completed. Bainbridge was launched on 27 August 1901. She was placed in reserve commission at Philadelphia on 24 November 1902, with Lieutenant G. W. Williams in command, and towed to Norfolk, Virginia. She was placed in full commission on 12 February 1903. The cost for the hull and machinery was $283,000.
The Bainbridge-class design was intended to combine high speed with improved seaworthiness, and had a raised forecastle instead of the "turtleback" forecastle common in European designs. The hull was long overall and between the perpendiculars, with a beam of and a mean draft of . Design displacement was and full load, although all ships of the class, including Bainbridge were overweight, with Bainbridge displacing full load when completed. Bainbridge was powered by triple expansion steam engines rated at , fed by four Thornycroft boilers which raised steam at . Design speed was , she reached a speed of during sea trials. Four funnels were fitted. Armament consisted of two /50 caliber guns, five 6-pounder () guns and two torpedo tubes.
Service history First commissioning Assigned to the 1st Torpedo Flotilla, she spent the next three months completing trials and outfitting. On 1 June 1903, her flotilla made the trip to Annapolis, Maryland, where it became part of the North Atlantic Fleet's recently formed Coast Squadron. A week later, Bainbridge left Annapolis with the Flotilla and the Coast Squadron and headed south to Newport News, Virginia. The destroyer and her traveling companions set out on 18 June for a summer of drills and exercises in New England waters. Those evolutions consisted of a search problem followed by joint maneuvers with units of the Army, most of which took place along the coast of Maine. Detached from the Coast Squadron on 26 September 1903, the 1st Torpedo Flotilla returned to Hampton Roads to fit out for service on the Asiatic Station.
Following weeks of preparation, Bainbridge stood out of Chesapeake Bay and headed south with the rest of the 1st Torpedo Flotilla and on 12 December 1903. After stops in South Carolina at Charleston and Parris Island, the little convoy arrived at Key West, Florida, on 18 December. The auxiliary cruiser relieved Baltimore as the flotilla's escort for the remainder of the journey to the Far East.
Transfer to the Far East Setting out on 23 December 1903, the flotilla proceeded by way of Puerto Rico and the Canary Islands to Gibraltar where it arrived on 27 January 1904. Resuming the voyage on 31 January, the warships stopped at Algiers for a week in early February. On 9 February, they arrived at Valletta, Malta, where the flotilla and Buffalo had to lay over for a fortnight while went into dry dock to have her propellers repaired after damaging them while mooring. Transiting the Suez Canal on 26 February, the flotilla stayed at Port Suez, Egypt, until the 29th when it headed down the Red Sea to Aden. In March, Bainbridge and her companions visited Bombay, India, and Colombo, Ceylon. They made the last stop before reaching their destination, a port call at Singapore, between 3 and 9 April. The flotilla then made the relatively short final leg of the voyage, from Singapore to Cavite in the Philippines, on 9 April 1904.
Far East duty Their successful completion of the four-month voyage from the east coast to the Orient did much to prove torpedo-boat destroyers capable of extended operations at sea with the fleet. The manner in which she and her colleagues served on the Asiatic Station, alternating between duty in Chinese waters and service in the Philippines, further substantiated their utility and hinted at their ultimate versatility. Less than seven weeks after arriving in the Philippines, Bainbridge led the flotilla, she wore the flotilla commander's flag, out of Manila Bay on its way to its first tour of duty in China. The warships spent June and early July at Hong Kong, making the passage from Hong Kong to Shanghai on 11 July. For the rest of the summer, Bainbridge and the other destroyers joined the Asiatic Fleet's Battleship Squadron in gun and torpedo drills off the Chinese coast and spent much time showing the flag in Chinese ports.
The latter employment, supporting American diplomatic presence in China, had taken on an increasing importance as the Imperial Chinese government's effectiveness degenerated in the course of the nineteenth century and during the early years of the twentieth century. Foreign governments felt compelled to send naval forces to provide protection for their nationals conducting all sorts of business in China but then used this need as a pretext to extort quasi-colonial concessions from the prostrate nation. As a result, the Great Powers entered into a fierce competition for political and economic advantage in China. Bainbridge and her flotilla-mates served as a part of American diplomacy's effort both to maintain Chinese sovereignty and to keep access open to American interests in China.
Russo-Japanese War This, her first, tour of duty in China coincided with one of the several occasions when the friction over benefits in China created enough heat to burst into the flames of war. Earlier in the year, war between Japan and Russia began with Japan's attack on the Russian squadron at Port Arthur. Unable to bottle the Russian ships up securely in Port Arthur or to lure them out to their destruction, the Japanese set about investing their base. After several months, the siege forced the Russian squadron to attempt the run to Vladivostok on 10 August 1904. Japanese mines sank or damaged several Russian ships; and, in the ensuing confusion, some Russian ships were separated from the main body before it retired back into Port Arthur to its ultimate doom. Thus, Bainbridge found herself at Shanghai when , one of the refugees from Admiral Vitgeft's squadron, sought sanctuary there. When her pursuers sent a destroyer into the Yangtze to reconnoiter Askold, Rear Admiral Yates Stirling dispatched Bainbridge to deter the probe and to discourage a repetition of the high-handed Japanese behavior at Chefoo where they had violated international law by seizing another refugee from Vitgeft's squadron after she had interned herself in the neutral port. The ploy succeeded. The Japanese chose to allow Askold to intern herself, and the Russian commander wisely did so.
Following that incident, Bainbridge spent another two months in Chinese waters before departing Shanghai on 4 October. She and her flotilla-mates then passed three weeks at Hong Kong before resuming the voyage to the Philippines on 26 October. The destroyer reached Cavite on 28 October and spent the remainder of 1904 and the first few weeks of 1905 engaged in local operations, mostly torpedo drills and gunnery practice. In March 1905, Bainbridge and the destroyer flotilla left the Philippines with the Battleship Squadron for dry docking in Hong Kong. She returned to Manila with those units early in April, and the destroyers received orders to head "south to patrol the coast of Palawan and the waters north of Borneo...." These orders came in response to reports that Russian Rear Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky's Baltic Fleet had finally set sail after a three-month layover at Madagascar to complete its voyage to join the war in the Far East. Bainbridge and her colleagues spent the next few months guarding the American Philippines against neutrality violations by the Russians and the Japanese. This danger effectively evaporated with the nearly complete destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet by Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō at the Battle of Tsushima on 27 and 28 May.
"Show the flag" – China 1905–1906 On 1 July 1905, Bainbridge stood out of Manila Bay with the flotilla to accompany the battleship and cruiser squadrons on the annual northern redeployment to conduct summer exercises and to "show the flag" in Chinese waters. The first portion of the normal summer drills and port visits went off as usual; but, early in August, China displayed another burst of nationalism when a boycott was organized in response to the Chinese exclusion policy then in effect on the American west coast. Initially, this brought little disruption to the Asiatic Fleet's routine. The warships carried out their exercises and visited Chinese ports as usual. The destroyers even returned south to the Philippines in October according to custom. Only then came the break with normal routine. Instead of passing the winter months in the Philippines, Bainbridge and Barry spent just six weeks there before returning north to China late in November after President Theodore Roosevelt chose to brandish the "Big Stick".
The mission lasted through the winter with the destroyers joining other ships of the Asiatic Fleet in repeated calls at Chinese ports in a vigorous display of the naval might of the United States. By the spring of 1906, the Chinese national feeling against the United States had subsided so that, though Bainbridge and Barry remained in Chinese waters and continued to "show the flag," they were also able to resume many of the normal training evolutions more typical of their annual summer sojourns in Chinese waters. Her stay in northern waters thus continued through the summer and into the fall. At the end of September, Bainbridge and Barry left Chefoo, China, in company with to return to the Philippines for the first time since the previous fall. After stopping off at Amoy, China, from 3 to 8 October, the warships arrived back at Cavite on the 10th.
First decommissioning On 9 January 1907, Bainbridge was placed out of commission at the Cavite Navy Yard to undergo repairs to her machinery. Problems with the boilers in the new destroyers had been reported as early as 1905 when the Asiatic Fleet commander's report alluded to the need to retube them as soon as circumstances allowed. The repairs appear to have staggered, no doubt to allow some of the flotilla to remain active and possibly because of limited yard facilities. Three of them; , and had been out of commission at Cavite since early December 1905. Presumably, Bainbridges decommissioning date had been arranged to nearly coincide with Chaunceys return to active duty on 12 January 1907. Bainbridge remained out of service at Cavite for nearly 14 months before being recommissioned on 2 April 1908, Ens. Joseph V. Ogan in command.
Second commissioning − Xinhai Revolution