Ships
- USS Allen (DD-66) Captain from 19 April 1918 · Relieved on 10 January 1919
Louis Calott Farley graduated from the United States Naval Academy in the class of 1905 and served in the United States Navy through the First World War, reaching the rank of commander. A Navy Cross later marked that wartime sea duty. The citation credited his command of Ammen and of Allen on patrol in waters sown with submarines and mines, on escort of troop and supply convoys, and in a long run of attacks against enemy submarines. He retired as a captain.
He took command of Allen on 19 April 1918, relieving Henry David Cooke, Jr.. The Sampson-class destroyer, DD-66, had been in European waters since the summer of 1917. Samuel Woods Bryant had commanded her when she commissioned in January of that year. By the spring of 1918 she was working from Queenstown, Ireland, on patrol and convoy escort in the Western Approaches.
Four days after Farley assumed command, lookouts sighted a U-boat on the surface. Two shots from the forward four-inch gun splashed close, and once the boat submerged Allen laid nineteen depth charges while the convoy turned away. In mid-May he took her out of Queenstown as the senior ship of seven American destroyers, with listening gear fitted in Allen and two of the others. On 16 May O'Brien sighted a periscope and attacked. Allen closed and dropped thirteen charges along the boat's estimated track, with nothing showing afterward. Three days later she ran through a mile-long oil slick reported by Patterson, dropping charges at short intervals and then five more where the oil seemed to rise. A fresh gush of oil followed. U-101, the submarine then working that stretch of sea, survived. Rushes on periscopes on 5 June and again on 29 June went the same way: the boat went deep, the charges went down, and the contact faded.
On the night of 20 July 1918, bound back to Queenstown with the fuel ship Kanawha after a convoy, Allen sighted a submarine on the surface, and both ships opened fire. Recognition signals identified the boat as the American submarine L-2, which came through unhurt. On 30 July another suspected contact drew thirteen depth charges and left no visible result. On 13 August, in heavy weather, a kite balloon towed by the British sloop Flying Fox went into the sea. Allen sent her whaleboat, took off the balloon's crew, and helped get the balloon back.
The hardest job of the cruise came on 12 September 1918, when U-82 torpedoed the British liner Galway Castle off the Fastnet. The ship was carrying more than 900 people, civilians, crew, and wounded South African soldiers starting for home. The torpedo broke her back. Boats went into a rough sea overloaded, and 143 people died. Allen and two other American destroyers made for the scene. She arrived in the early evening to find the liner reported empty and the light failing, with British destroyers already searching close around the wreck. Farley judged that any boats still adrift would be driven downwind toward the French coast, so Allen and Kimberly searched to leeward through the night and meant to turn upwind at dawn.
At daylight on 13 September a small dark shape on the eastern horizon proved to be a submarine. The destroyers closed as it submerged. Allen listened into the afternoon and dropped five charges, then was ordered back to Galway Castle. She stayed with the liner and the tugs trying to bring her in to Queenstown, through thick weather, for two days. When the towlines parted, sailors from Allen boarded the working, buckling hull and made a line fast again. Towing continued until dawn on 15 September. The tugs then cut free, the liner broke in half, and she sank. Allen went on to Berehaven. In December the Admiralty and Vice Admiral William S. Sims commended the ship and her people for the effort to save Galway Castle and those who had been aboard her.
After a drydocking at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead from 25 September to 10 October, Allen returned to hunting. On 30 October, escorting the British liner Mauretania in a heavy sea, she took buckled plates, and she and the other escorts fell back rather than batter themselves trying to stay with the fast ship. She reached Queenstown the next day for repairs and was still there on 11 November when the Armistice took effect at 1100. Escort runs among British ports filled the rest of the month. On 5 December she left Queenstown for Brest and joined the ships bringing President Woodrow Wilson to France. On 13 December she met that convoy, and with the American formation passed in review before the transport George Washington, the president embarked and Allen's crew manning the rail. She crossed the transport's bow that afternoon, then entered Cork on 14 December. The day after Christmas she sailed for home with nine other ships, called at Ponta Delgada in the Azores on 30 December, and reached New York on 7 January 1919. John Edwin Ostrander, Jr. relieved Farley in command of Allen on 10 January 1919.