After renaming her SS Saetia to avoid confusion with the battleship USS Colorado (BB-45), then under construction, the Navy assigned her Identification No.

Following a period of repairs that included the installation of her gun battery, Saetia took on a full load of supplies for the United States Army Quartermaster Corps and departed Philadelphia for New York City on 14 March 1918.

Saetia, with U.S. Army supplies in her holds, again joined a France-bound convoy at New York on 22 September 1918, bound for Brest.

At 0830 on 9 November 1918, just two days before the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Saetia struck a mine – most likely laid by the Imperial German Navy submarine SM U-117 sometime between 8 August and 1 September 1918 – abreast her number 3 hold and sank in the Atlantic Ocean off Fenwick Island, Delaware, 10 nautical miles south-southeast of Fenwick Island Lightship in about 120 feet (37 meters) of water.

146 at Ocean City, Maryland, while the steamship Kennebec picked up those in the life rafts and put them ashore safely at Cape May, New Jersey.