USS Sanderling (AM-37) was an Lapwing-class minesweeper acquired by the United States Navy for the dangerous task of removing mines from minefields laid in the water to prevent ships from passing.

Commissioned after the end of World War I, Sanderling conducted exercises and performed miscellaneous towing operations out of Tompkinsville, New York, through January and February 1919.

In March, she proceeded to Boston, Massachusetts, whence she sailed on 14 April for the Orkney Islands to join in the postwar sweeping operations to clear the North Sea for peacetime shipping.

Experimental in nature, that sweep disposed of only 221 mines and put hardly a dent in the barrage which had been stretched from Orkney to Norway to stop German submarine traffic from going into the Atlantic Ocean.

She conducted exercises en route; arrived at San Diego, California on 28 October; and remained in Californian waters until January 1921.