Ships
- USS Edsall (DD-219) Captain, 26 November 1920 – 23 June 1921
Commander A. H. Rice of the United States Navy was the first commanding officer of the destroyer Edsall. He commissioned her on 26 November 1920 and remained her captain until 23 June 1921.
William Cramp and Sons had launched Edsall at Philadelphia on 29 July 1920. The yard had laid her keel on 15 September 1919, and that July she was numbered DD-219. She was a Clemson-class flush-deck destroyer of about 1,190 tons and a little more than 314 feet, designed for roughly 35 knots, with four 4-inch guns, one 3-inch gun, and twelve 21-inch torpedo tubes. The Navy named her for Seaman Norman Eckley Edsall, killed near Apia, Samoa, on 1 April 1899 while helping a wounded officer during a landing. His sister, Bessie Edsall Bracey, sponsored the ship.
The commissioning ceremony was held at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Rice, a commander, accepted the new destroyer and took charge of a crew of a little more than a hundred officers and men who had not yet worked the ship at sea. The days around the ceremony went to machinery, guns, torpedo mounts, and the ordinary business of turning a builder’s hull into a fleet destroyer.
Edsall left Philadelphia on 6 December 1920 for a shakedown cruise to San Diego. She called at Newport, the New York Navy Yard, and Hampton Roads, then entered the navy yard at Charleston, South Carolina, on 18 December. Under way again on 22 December, she reached Havana on 24 December, passed through the Panama Canal, and arrived at San Diego on 11 January 1921. Through the rest of that winter and the spring, still under Rice, she drilled on the West Coast with other ships of the fleet in battle practice and gunnery.
Rice left Edsall on 23 June 1921, and Halsey Powell followed him in command. The destroyer remained in the Pacific for the rest of 1921, went to European and Near Eastern waters in 1922, and later served on the Asiatic Station. She was lost in the Java Sea on 1 March 1942. His duty after leaving the ship is not known.