prior to the entrance of the united states into world war i, she served on neutrality patrol duty, trying to protect american and neutral-flagged merchant ships from interference by british or german warships and u-boats. in the course of performing those duties, "balch" was at newport, rhode island, in early october 1916. at 0530 on 8 october, wireless reports came in of a german submarine stopping ships near the lightship nantucket, off the eastern end of long island. after an sos from the british steamer was received at about 1230, rear admiral albert gleaves ordered "balch" and other destroyers at newport to attend to survivors. the american destroyers arrived on the scene about 1700 when the u-boat, under the command of "kapitänleutnant" hans rose, was in the process of stopping the holland-america line cargo ship . shortly after, "u-53" stopped the british passenger ship . as rose had done with three other ships "u-53" had sunk earlier in the day, he gave passengers and crew aboard "blommersdijk" and "stephano" adequate time to abandon the ships before sinking the pair. at one point, rose signaled "balch" requesting that she move out of the way to allow "stephano" to be torpedoed, much to the later chagrin of lord beresford, who denounced "balch"s compliance as "aiding and abetting" the germans in a speech in the house of lords. in total, 226 survivors from "u-53"s five victims were rescued by the destroyer flotilla. "balch" picked up the crew of "stephano" and a number of passengers, later transferring them to destroyer for return to newport.