The first USS Welles (DD-257) was a in the United States Navy, and transferred to the Royal Navy where she served as HMS Cameron (I05) during World War II. As USS Welles Named for Gideon Welles, she was laid down on 13 November 1918 - two days after the signing of the armistice that ended World War I - by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation's Fore River plant. The ship was launched on 8 May 1919; sponsored by Miss Alma Freeman Welles, the granddaughter of Gideon Welles. Welles was commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 2 September 1919. After her final sea trials off the east coast, Welles joined Squadron 2, Destroyer Force, Pacific Fleet, based at San Diego, California. She operated out of San Diego, "showing the flag" and training, until she was decommissioned there on 15 June 1922. Meanwhile, the destroyer was classified as DD-257 during the fleet-wide assignment of alphanumeric hull numbers on 17 July 1920. Welles remained at San Diego into the 1930s, as crises multiplied in Europe and the Far East. On 1 September 1939, German forces invaded Poland, triggering World War II. In response to the European conflict, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the neutrality of the United States and instructed the Navy to establish a Neutrality Patrol off the eastern seaboard, out of Guantanamo Bay, and at the eastward approaches of the Panama Canal. To carry out the patrol, the Navy recommissioned 77 destroyers and light minelayers to augment fleet units already at sea that had assumed their patrol stations in September 1939, soon after the outbreak of fighting in Poland. Welles was recommissioned at San Diego on 6 November 1939. She was fitted out at San Diego and then moved to the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California, to undergo alterations and a drydocking that started a few days before Christmas and extended into the new year, 1940. Following the yard work, Welles arrived back at San Diego in company with the destroyer and later departed the area on 5 February, bound for Panama. She transited the Panama Canal on the 16th and stopped at the Submarine Base at Coco Solo on the following day. There, she embarked six enlisted men for transportation to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and arrived there on 25 February. After patrolling the approaches to Guantanamo Bay for nearly two weeks, Welles - transporting 10 enlisted men - sailed