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 6 crewmen from a sunken Dutch cargo ship to Newport, Rhode Island.

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

USS McDougal was commissioned into the United States Navy on 16 June 1914 at Boston under the temporary command of Lieutenant, junior grade, John H. Hoover.

Prior to America's entry into World War I, she operated out of New York and Newport, Rhode Island, and carried out maneuvers and tactical exercises along the east coast.

There were concerns by Dudley Field Malone, the local port collector, that some of the interned German steamships at New York might try to slip out during a heavy snowstorm.

[12] While on board McDougal during one of these patrols, Malone discovered what The New York Times termed a "widespread conspiracy" intended to supply British warships outside U.S. territorial waters, in violation of the American neutrality in World War I.

After an SOS from the British steamer West Point was received at about 12:30, Rear Admiral Albert Gleaves ordered McDougal and other destroyers at Newport to attend to survivors.

[16][Note 2] According to a firsthand account of the events by Nathan Levy, a quartermaster on McDougal, published on 22 October in The New York Times, the destroyer steamed the 100 nautical miles (190 km) distance to the lightship in three-and-a-half hours, arriving after German submarine U-53 had stopped the Holland America Line cargo ship Blommersdijk and the British passenger ship Stephano.

Steaming with Wadsworth, the division's flagship, under the command of Joseph K. Taussig, McDougal, Porter, Davis, Conyngham, and Wainwright departed New York on 24 April and arrived at Queenstown, Ireland, on 4 May and began patrolling the southern approaches to the Irish Sea the next day.

[1] On 8 September, as McDougal escorted a convoy off the southwest coast of England, she detected a surfaced submarine in the early morning hours and gave chase at full speed.

The U-boat submerged about 500 yards (460 m) ahead of the closing destroyer, and McDougal dropped two depth charges which brought an oil slick to the surface.

According to the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, McDougal's actions prevented an attack on the convoy and resulted in "probable damage" to the submarine.

[23] When President Woodrow Wilson arrived at Brest on George Washington just over two weeks later, the destroyer served as part of that transport's escort into the harbor.

[1] McDougal resumed duty along the east coast and, during May, provided part of the comprehensive at-sea support as U.S. Navy seaplanes undertook the historic first aerial crossing of the Atlantic.

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.

[1] In August 1929, McDougal and Tampa were dispatched to locate and sink the steamer Quimistan, which had been reported as abandoned and on fire in the Atlantic 1,100 nautical miles (2,000 km) east of Norfolk, Virginia.