With World War I raging, the German submarine U-117 created havoc with the New England commercial fishing fleet during the summer of 1918, and the U.S. Navy acquired Arabia on 13 August 1918 from the Commonwealth Fisheries Company for use as a decoy ship in antisubmarine operations against U-117.

She was assigned the naval registry identification number 3434 and commissioned on 14 August 1918 at Boston, Massachusetts, as USS Arabia (ID-3434).

The concept behind the use of Arabia as a decoy ship was for her to deploy into U-117's presumed operating area teamed with a U.S Navy submarine, which would follow her.

Arabia departed Boston on 14 August 1918 and shaped a course for the fishing grounds at Georges Bank, a large elevated area of the sea floor which separates the Gulf of Maine from the Atlantic Ocean situated between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.