USS Wadena

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Wadena was a steel-hulled steam yacht built in 1891 by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in Cleveland, Ohio, for Jeptha Homer Wade II. As Wade’s private yacht, she was luxurious and well equipped, with a triple-expansion steam engine and a schooner rig, and she undertook long voyages around the world, including a Far East trip in 1894–95 that brought her to Japan and China. At one point Emperor Meiji even considered purchasing her, though Wade kept the yacht. In 1895 she collided with a fishing boat near Massachusetts but was not seriously damaged.

In 1917 the U.S. Navy bought Wadena for World War I service. She was designated SP-158 and commissioned in January 1918. Wadena escorted submarine chasers across the Atlantic, patrolled the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and helped rescue the crew of the sinking tug Mariner on February 26, 1918, taking on board the Mariner’s commander and other survivors. After the war, she served as part of a special task force moving submarine chasers to Europe, and spent time operating from Bermuda, Gibraltar, and other Atlantic points, conducting patrols, escorts, and occasional mail and passenger transport.

Wadena returned to the United States in January 1919, was placed in reserve, and decommissioned in May 1919. The Navy sold her later that year, though a legal dispute followed over the sale. She changed hands several times and, after a period of private ownership, she was abandoned and scrapped in 1931.