USS Kane (DD-235/APD-18) was a Clemson-class destroyer in the United States Navy during World War II. She was the first ship named for Elisha Kent Kane. Construction and commissioning Kane was laid down 3 July 1918 and launched 12 August 1919 by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation; sponsored by Miss Florence Kane, cousin of Elisha Kent Kane; and commissioned 11 June 1920. Service history Kane departed Newport, Rhode Island 20 August 1920 for her shakedown cruise to Gibraltar, Brest, Copenhagen, Danzig, and the Gulf of Riga. She was just outside the Gulf in the Baltic Sea 1 October 1920 and supposedly well clear of the minefields laid in World War I when a mine exploded, bending her port engine shafts and port propeller struts. After repair at Landskrona, Sweden, and overhaul at Chatham, England, she sailed 21 May 1921 for the Mediterranean. On 22 June 1921, Kane rescued an Italian torpedo boat drifting upon the rocks off Cape Spartivento. On 3 July, she reached Constantinople for relief work in Turkish waters. She returned to Newport 23 August. She sailed 2 October with Destroyer Squadron 14 to evacuate refugees and perform other relief work in Asia Minor. She arrived in Constantinople 22 October, and was constantly used to carry supplies, medical aid, refugees and relief officials between ports of the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. She departed Constantinople 18 May 1923, and spent the next five years with the Scouting Fleet operating along the United States East Coast and in the Caribbean. She departed New York 13 February 1925 for a fleet training cruise to San Diego, California, and from there she sailed to Pearl Harbor and returned 17 July. In the spring of 1927 the destroyer patrolled off bandit-plagued Nicaragua and the Honduras. She decommissioned in the Philadelphia Navy Yard 31 December 1930. Kane recommissioned 1 April 1932, and departed Philadelphia 29 June for San Diego, her base for the next four years. She got underway from San Diego 27 April 1936 for fleet exercises in the Caribbean before entering the New York Navy Yard to prepare for special service. Kane departed New York 17 August 1936 for Spain to evacuate American citizens whose lives were endangered by the civil war in Spain. On 30 August, en route to Bilbao, she had to open fire three times to drive off a tri-motored monoplane dropping bombs within a hundred yards