On 1 June 1903, her flotilla made the trip to Annapolis, Maryland, where it became part of the North Atlantic Fleet's recently formed Coast Squadron.

Detached from the Coast Squadron on 26 September 1903, the 1st Torpedo Flotilla returned to Hampton Roads to fit out for service on the Asiatic Station.

[5] Following weeks of preparation, Bainbridge stood out of Chesapeake Bay and headed south with the rest of the 1st Torpedo Flotilla and Baltimore on 12 December 1903.

On 9 February, they arrived at Valletta, Malta, where the flotilla and Buffalo had to lay over for a fortnight while Barry went into dry dock to have her propellers repaired after damaging them while mooring.

[5] Their successful completion of the four-month voyage from the east coast to the Orient did much to prove torpedo-boat destroyers capable of extended operations at sea with the fleet.

The manner in which she and her colleagues served on the Asiatic Station, alternating between duty in Chinese waters and service in the Philippines, further substantiated their utility and hinted at their ultimate versatility.

Unable to bottle the Russian ships up securely in Port Arthur or to lure them out to their destruction, the Japanese set about investing their base.

The destroyer reached Cavite on 28 October and spent the remainder of 1904 and the first few weeks of 1905 engaged in local operations, mostly torpedo drills and gunnery practice.

She returned to Manila with those units early in April, and the destroyers received orders to head "south to patrol the coast of Palawan and the waters north of Borneo...." These orders came in response to reports that Russian Rear Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky's Baltic Fleet had finally set sail after a three-month layover at Madagascar to complete its voyage to join the war in the Far East.

This danger effectively evaporated with the nearly complete destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet by Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō at the Battle of Tsushima on 27 and 28 May.

[5] On 1 July 1905, Bainbridge stood out of Manila Bay with the flotilla to accompany the battleship and cruiser squadrons on the annual northern redeployment to conduct summer exercises and to "show the flag" in Chinese waters.

The first portion of the normal summer drills and port visits went off as usual; but, early in August, China displayed another burst of nationalism when a boycott was organized in response to the Chinese exclusion policy then in effect on the American west coast.

Instead of passing the winter months in the Philippines, Bainbridge and Barry spent just six weeks there before returning north to China late in November after President Theodore Roosevelt chose to brandish the "Big Stick".

[5] The mission lasted through the winter with the destroyers joining other ships of the Asiatic Fleet in repeated calls at Chinese ports in a vigorous display of the naval might of the United States.

At the end of September, Bainbridge and Barry left Chefoo, China, in company with Chattanooga to return to the Philippines for the first time since the previous fall.

[5] For three years after her return to active service, the warship carried out a normal routine for Asiatic Fleet destroyers unburdened by extraordinary diplomatic demands.

Instead, they remained in Chinese waters, where they were soon joined by every available Asiatic Fleet ship, to protect Americans and their interests in China through the winter and into the spring of 1912.

Her return coincided with, and may have been caused in part by, a widespread manpower shortage that forced a number of torpedo boats and destroyers into a form of caretaker status.

[5] Bainbridge remained in this semi-active state for almost a year, resuming full active duty on 1 April 1913, with Lieutenant (junior grade), later Admiral, Raymond A. Spruance in command.

In mid-April, the diplomatic crisis over the California Alien Land Law of 1913 arose with Japan and forestalled the usual summer deployment to Chinese waters.

In 1915, Bainbridge made a short deployment to Shanghai but it came late in the fall, November and December, rather than in the summer and it was her last visit to China.

Even the entry of the United States into World War I in the spring of 1917, which found Bainbridge moored at Cebu in the southern islands, did not disrupt her schedule of Philippine operations immediately.

She was sold to Henry A. Hitner's Sons Company, of Philadelphia, on 3 January 1920 for conversion to mercantile service as a fruit carrier.