During her Coast Guard career, she saw service during World War I. Bancroft was laid down in 1891 at Elizabethport, New Jersey, by Samuel L. Moore & Sons Shipyard and launched on 30 April 1892.

After the practice cruise of 1896, she was converted into a conventional gunboat with a reduced armament and the original three-masted barkentine rig cut down to the two masts of a brigantine.

[3] Called home as relations between the United States and Spain deteriorated early in 1898, Bancroft reached Boston, Massachusetts, on 4 April 1898.

On 28 July 1898, Bancroft seized the small Spanish schooner Ensenada de Cortez but returned the boat to her owner the next day because it was essentially valueless.

[1][3] Initially home-ported at Curtis Bay, she made her first summer training cruise to Europe and the Mediterranean in 1907, also visiting Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

[5] In 1910, the United States Department of War vacated Fort Trumbull near the mouth of the Thames River on Long Island Sound in New London, Connecticut, and it became the new home of the Revenue Cutter Service School of Instruction.

[6][7] When she was not being used as a training ship, Itasca was assigned relief duties for other revenue cutters on the U.S. East Coast requiring yard availability for repairs.

[13] With the declaration of war, Itasca was reassigned to the Fourth Naval District headquartered at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was refitted for anti-submarine service with the addition of 3-inch rapid-fire guns and a Y-gun for launching depth charges.

[3] The Coast Guard acquired a replacement training vessel, the former barkentine-rigged gunboat USS Vicksburg, from the U.S. Navy on 1 July 1921 and renamed her USCGC Alexander Hamilton on 18 August 1922.