USS BAGLEY DD-185

USS BAGLEY DD-185 Ship History

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, November 2021

The second Bagley (Destroyer No. 185) was laid down on 11 May 1918 at Newport News, Va., by the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co.; launched on 19 October 1918; sponsored by Mrs. Adelaide Worth Bagley, Ens. Bagley’s mother; and commissioned at Norfolk, Va., on 27 August 1919, Cmdr. Reuben L. Walker in command.

After outfitting at Norfolk, Va., during September 1919, Bagley put to sea on 11 October to complete sea trials and to proceed to Newport, R.I., where she spent the period 13 to 26 October.  From there, she headed south to Key West on her way to visit ports on the gulf coast of the United States.  The destroyer reached Key West on 30 October, took on supplies, and then steered north along Florida’s west coast bound for Pensacola, arriving on the 31st.  Based temporarily at Pensacola, Bagley made a port visit apiece to New Orleans, La., and to Galveston, Texas, in November.  On 13 December, she departed Pensacola to return to the east coast and arrived in Norfolk on the 18th.

The warship opened the year 1920, finishing repairs to damage she had suffered in a collision with Thomas (Destroyer No. 182) at New Orleans early in November of the previous year.  On 10 January 1920, she stood out of Chesapeake Bay with other Atlantic Fleet destroyers bound for winter maneuvers in the West Indies.  She and her colleagues reached Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the 19th and began 14 weeks of tactical exercises and gunnery drills, punctuated by visits to various West Indian ports.  The exercises ended in April, and Bagley headed back north with the fleet.  After a visit to New York early in May, she began summer drills at Newport, R.I., at mid-month.  Except for a brief period in dry dock at Norfolk early in June, the destroyer spent the entire summer engaged in exercises out of Newport.  At the beginning of September, Bagley left Newport and steamed via Norfolk to Charleston, S.C.  Charleston was her home port, and had been since her commissioning nearly a year before, but she made her first visit when she arrived there at the end of the first week in September.

Bagley spent the remainder of 1920 in port at Charleston and operated locally during the first four months of 1921.  On 10 May, she put to sea bound via Norfolk and New York for Newport, R.I., and another summer of exercises off the New England coast.  In mid-June, however, orders to Washington, D.C., interrupted this routine.  The warship arrived at the Washington Navy Yard on 18 June and began five weeks of duty transporting dignitaries between Washington and the site of the Army-Navy aerial bombardment tests off the Virginia capes.  During the period, she embarked Adm. Robert E. Coontz, the Chief of Naval Operations, to observe the tests on the former German torpedo boat G-102 carried out on 13 July and Italian military leader, General Pietro Badoglio, for the sinking of the former German battleship Ostfriesland on the 20th.  Also during that span of time, the Navy adopted the alphanumeric system of hull classification and identification, and Bagley was designated DD-185.

Bagley concluded this interlude serving VIPs on 22 July 1921 and returned north to Newport to resume summer drills.  That employment, punctuated by visits to several New England and Middle Atlantic ports, occupied her for the rest of the summer.  Early in September, she returned to Charleston and remained there for the duration of the year.  She saw little service in 1922 because she found herself among the 157 destroyers that the Navy had to decommission owing to straitened fiscal circumstances.  The orders identifying the warships to be inactivated came out in mid-February, and those selected from the Atlantic Fleet began reporting to Philadelphia in mid-March.  Bagley‘s turn to be decommissioned came on 12 July 1922.

The destroyer remained inactive at Philadelphia for almost two decades.  During that time, she lost her name to Bagley (DD-386) on 31 May 1935.  A little over four years later, however, World War II and the Royal Navy’s dire need for destroyers saved her, by then known only as DD-185, from the shipbreakers.  Renamed Doran on 20 November 1939, she was refurbished at Philadelphia and commissioned there on 17 June 1940.  Although briefly assigned to the Atlantic Squadron, Doran was quickly readied for transfer to the Royal Navy and was delivered at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 23 September 1940.

Renamed HMS St. Marys (I.12), she made her first landfall in the British Isles at Belfast, Northern Ireland, on 8 October.  From there, she moved on to the west coast of Scotland where she joined the 1st Minelaying Squadron on the 31st.  The warship took part in some of the early minelaying operations carried out in the Denmark Strait and served as an escort for convoys.  In 1941, St. Marys participated in most of the squadron’s minelaying missions and rendered valuable service in defense of shipping.  The destroyer suffered damage in a collision with the transport Royal Ulsterman on 29 August 1941 sufficient to keep her under repair in the dockyard for the rest of the year.

Returned to active service in 1942, she continued minelaying and escort duty through the end of that year and the next.  In February 1944, St. Marys was paid off in the Tyne and remained there until the end of the war.  The Royal Navy formally placed her in reserve on 6 September 1944, and on 25 March 1945, she was sold for scrap at Rosyth.