She, along with 20 of her sisters, were constructed at William Cramp & Sons shipyards in Philadelphia using specifications and detail designs drawn up by Bath Iron Works.

[4] Low military budgets were the cause of these periods of inactivity, as the Navy did not have the funds or manpower to maintain a number of ships, including Blakeley.

She then joined the Neutrality Patrol until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entrance into World War II.

As the ship turned to resume its course, it was struck by a torpedo fired by the unnoticed German submarine U-156 under the command of Werner Hartenstein.

The ship was steered with a combination of rudder and varying shaft speeds, and four hours after the attack, she was moored in Fort-de-France.

Destroyers Breckinridge, Greer, Tarbell and two PBY Catalina planes from VP-53 were scrambled to assist the stricken Blakeley.

[8] At Fort-de-France, she was fitted with a wooden bulkhead to cover the area blown off by the torpedo, and an anchor was improvised out of a truck's axle and differential housing.

[9] Blakeley spent most of the rest of the war on convoy escort duty in the Caribbean Sea Frontier, except for two short deployments in the Atlantic Ocean.

[9] On 1 January to 23 February 1943 she was assigned to hunter-killer duty with Task Group 21.13 in the North Atlantic, and from 24 March to 11 May 1943, she escorted a convoy to Bizerte, Tunisia.

[4] From 18 March to 13 June 1945,[4] she was stationed at New London, Connecticut, training U.S. submariners in Long Island Sound to avoid destroyers.