The ship was the second U.S. Navy vessel named in honor of John Ericsson, the Swedish-born builder of the ironclad warship USS Monitor during the American Civil War.

She was one of seventeen destroyers sent out to rescue survivors from five victims of German submarine U-53 off the Lightship Nantucket in October 1916, and carried 81 passengers from a sunken British ocean liner to Newport, Rhode Island.

Patrolling the Irish Sea out of Queenstown, Ireland, Ericsson made several unsuccessful attacks on U-boats, and rescued survivors of several ships sunk by the German craft.

Upon returning to the United States after the war, Ericsson conducted operations with the destroyers of the Atlantic Fleet until August 1919, when she was placed in reserve, still in commission.

The General Board of the United States Navy had called for two anti-aircraft guns for the O'Brien-class ships, as well as provisions for laying up to 36 floating mines.

With the Torpedo Flotilla of the Atlantic Fleet she sailed on 7 January 1916 for maneuvers in the Caribbean, using Key West and Guantanamo Bay as bases.

[1] At 05:30 on Sunday, 8 October 1916, wireless reports came in of a German submarine stopping ships near the Lightship Nantucket, off the eastern end of Long Island.

[1] Ericsson continued to sail out of Queenstown on patrol and escorting convoys, many times attacking submarines, standing by damaged ships, and rescuing survivors.

After June 1918, she was based at Brest, France; and during that summer, usually sailed about 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) ahead of convoys, towing aloft a kite balloon used for observation.

At the close of the war, Ericsson was overhauled at Liverpool, but returned to Brest in time to take part on 13 December in the welcoming honors rendered for President Woodrow Wilson, arriving in France on the transport George Washington.

She was laid up in reduced commission at Philadelphia and Charleston, South Carolina, in the years that followed, and put to sea only during the summer of 1921, when drills and exercises took her to Newport.

The Treasury Department eventually determined that the United States Coast Guard simply did not have the ships to constitute a successful patrol.

To cope with the problem, President Calvin Coolidge in 1924 authorized the transfer from the Navy to the Coast Guard of twenty old destroyers that were in reserve and out of commission.