For more than four years, she remained a unit of the 2nd Torpedo Flotilla and conducted operations along the eastern seaboard from Maine south to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

In June, she was reassigned back to her own type command as a unit of Division B, Destroyer Force; however, she continued her recruiting duty at New York through the end of the year.

During the remaining nine months of World War I, Worden maintained a grueling schedule escorting convoys between ports on the French coast.

In 1920, on the first anniversary of her return home, 3 January, she was sold to Henry A. Hitner's Sons Company of Philadelphia for conversion to mercantile service.

On 1 May 1942, she was steaming off the Florida coast when the nearby British freighter La Paz, en route from Liverpool, England, and Hampton Roads, VA, to Valparaiso, Chile, was torpedoed by the German submarine U-109 (Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Bleichrodt).