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USS City of Lewes

patrol vessel of the United States Navy

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ7868375 ↗
Source-derived summary

USS City of Lewes (SP-383), later USS Lewes (SP-383), was a minesweeper and patrol vessel that served in the United States Navy from 1917 to 1919.

City of Lewes was built as a commercial fishing boat of the same name in 1912 by W. G. Abbott at Milford, Delaware. In May 1917, the U.S. Navy purchased her for use on the section patrol as a minesweeper and patrol vessel during World War I. She was commissioned as USS City of Lewes (SP-383) on 12 May 1917, although her purchase apparently did not become official until 19 May 1917.

In accordance with a United States Department of the Navy general order that all section patrol craft should have their names shortened to surnames or single words (as applicable), City of Lewes was renamed USS Lewes (SP-383) in July 1917. However, she still often was called USS City of Lewes for the remainder of her Navy career.

After fitting out as a minesweeper, Lewes departed Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 14 August 1917 bound for Brest, France, which she reached on 18 September 1917. Following voyage repairs, she took up patrol and convoy escort duties, which she pursued for the remainder of World War I. She also engaged in minesweeping to keep shipping channels free of German naval mines, and she continued minesweeping work after the end of the war and into 1919.

Lewes was decommissioned at Brest on 8 September 1919 and sold abroad.

Notes

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “USS City of Lewes” as patrol vessel of the United States Navy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around City, Lewes and patrol.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1917, 1919, 1912—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with City, Lewes and patrol providing the first useful test.
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Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “USS City of Lewes”, the useful work is to connect “patrol vessel of the United States Navy” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7868375. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1917, 1919 and 1912.

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Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “USS City of Lewes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.