The lead ship in her class, Alert was destined for a long naval career, serving from 1875 to 1922, a period of 47 years, including service as a submarine tender in World War I.

Alert was laid down in 1873 by John Roach & Sons at the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works shipyard, Chester, Pennsylvania in 1873.

Alert operated out of ports on the Atlantic coast during the fall and winter of 1875 and 1876 until departing New York on 26 May 1876 on the first leg of a voyage to the Asiatic Station.

Proceeding by way of the Mediterranean Sea and the relatively new Suez Canal, she stopped at Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden before reaching Hong Kong on 11 September.

Unlike modern goodwill visits, her port calls frequently could be measured in terms of weeks and months rather than days.

In addition to the normal port visits and wreck investigations, she did survey work in the Bonin Islands during the spring and summer of 1881.

On 11 January 1882, Alert stood out of Hong Kong and embarked upon a voyage that took her to a number of places in the Orient that she had not previously visited.

Her itinerary during that cruise included Saigon, Bangkok, and Singapore in southeast Asia; Batavia (now Djakarta) and Sarawak in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia); and Labuan, Iloilo and Manila in the Philippines.

She returned to Japan via Hong Kong, and, on 15 April 1882, while steaming from Kobe to Yokohama, suffered damage as a result of being rammed by the Jingei, a side-paddle steamer which served as the Imperial yacht for Emperor Meiji.

Recommissioned at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 15 January 1887, for service on the Pacific Squadron, the warship departed San Francisco on 23 February and headed down the coast of Mexico toward Central and South America.

On 11 August 1888, she set sail from Callao, Peru, bound for Hawaii – then still an independent kingdom but heavily influenced by American residents.

She spent the next two years cruising the waters along the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese coasts and visiting most of the major ports in the area.

She departed Yokohama on 15 August; arrived in San Francisco on 21 September; and, two days later, was placed out of commission at the Mare Island Navy Yard.

Assigned to the Pacific Squadron once again, she returned to the Bering Sea late in May for a summer of duty suppressing seal poachers.

The vessel cruised along the Latin American littoral between Guatemala and Peru for over 16 months keeping watch over U.S. interests in the region.

The steamer remained in the San Francisco Bay area almost two months, spending about half that time at the Mare Island Navy Yard.

After almost two months at San Francisco—five weeks of which were spent at the Mare Island Navy Yard—she embarked upon a voyage to Sitka, Alaska, and back.

On 25 January 1912, she was placed in commission, in reserve, Lieutenant Charles E. Smith in command, in connection with her fitting out for service as a submarine tender.

In executing her new duties, she made short voyages along the California coast in much the same manner as she had done while serving as an apprentice training vessel.

In April 1918, Alert returned to the west coast and resumed duties as a Pacific Fleet Torpedo Flotilla submarine tender based at San Pedro, California.