[2] Luciline had a single screw, driven by a three-cylinder triple expansion engine that was built by J Dickinson & Sons of Sunderland and rated at 300 NHP.

After fitting out, the ship left Philadelphia on 16 December, headed for the West Indies, anchored off Havana on Christmas Day, and provided water for US warships operating in the area until leaving for home on 14 January 1899.

Recommissioned on 22 August 1900, she sailed for the Far East via the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and arrived on the Asiatic Station early in December of that year.

On 29 November, she received a new naval complement and was recommissioned to serve with the small group of auxiliaries that had been selected to support the Great White Fleet in its forthcoming cruise around the world.

Proceeding down the Atlantic coast of South America, she rounded Cape Horn and steamed north to the Mare Island Navy Yard which she reached on 30 April 1908.

She arrived at that port on 10 August, and remained in that vicinity until sailing on 1 October for Magdalena Bay, Mexico, where she anchored on the 6th and began supplying American warships there.

She continued this duty until after the United States entered World War I in 1917, filling her tanks with oil at ports along the Gulf coast and delivering it to bases in the Caribbean and on the Atlantic seaboard.

On 15 April, Arethusa departed Bermuda for the Azores in a group that consisted of some 40 Allied ships led by the light cruiser Salem.

After topping off the fuel tanks of destroyers and submarine chasers operating out of Marseille, she headed for the Portuguese coast on 13 March and reached Lisbon on the 16th.

From that port, she headed home via Gibraltar, the Azores, and Bermuda, supplying oil to warships whose bunkers were low, and arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, on 14 May.

In the ensuing three years of peacetime operations — primarily carrying oil from gulf ports to bases on the Atlantic seaboard — the ship was classified an oiler on 17 July 1920 and designated AO-7.