Acushnet – a steel-hulled revenue cutter – was launched on 16 May 1908 at Newport News, Virginia, by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co.; sponsored by Miss Alayce Duff; and commissioned at Baltimore on 6 November 1908. She saw service as a United States Revenue Cutter Service cutter, a U.S. Navy fleet tug, and as a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. She was taken out of service 8 January 1946.

USRC Acushnet was assigned to the Revenue Cutter Service station at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with her cruising grounds to encompass Buzzard's Bay, Nantucket Shoals, and adjacent waters. Departing the Revenue Cutter Service Depot at Arundel Cove, South Baltimore, on 8 November 1908, Acushnet reached her home port on the 27th.

Over the next decade, Acushnet operated out of Woods Hole and ranged the middle and northeastern seaboard of the United States, occasionally visiting the Depot at Arundel Cove, Curtis Bay; the towns of New Bedford and Marblehead, Massachusetts, New London, Connecticut, and Norfolk, Virginia. She patrolled regattas – including Ivy League contests between Harvard and Yale – and represented the Revenue Cutter Service at such events as the International Yacht Races at Marblehead and the Cotton Centennial Carnival at Fall River, Mass., in June 1911. In addition, due to her robust construction, the ship performed yearly "winter cruising" in the bitterly cold sea lanes of the North Atlantic to assist ships and mariners in distress. On 11 February 1914 she towed the lumber schooner Dustin G. Cressy to safety after she stranded off the Pamet River Life Saving Station in a snowstorm. Cressy drifted off on her own but was still in danger of being wrecked when she was taken into tow. During the first decade of her service, the Coast Guard Act became law on 28 January 1915 joining the Lifesaving Service and the Revenue Cutter Service to form the United States Coast Guard. On 15 April 1915 she pulled off schooner George E. Klink that went aground on Tom Shoal, or Hawes Shoal, off Cape Poge, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts in heavy weather earlier in the day.

Upon the entry of the United States into World War I in the spring of 1917, the Coast Guard cutter came under the aegis of the United States Navy as the United States Treasury Department relinquished control of its ships so that they might take part in the conflict. Initially, her station remained the same, Woods Hole; but, in the winter of 1917, she shifted to more northern climes. Her winter-cruising activities then proved to be good conditioning for her duty during the latter half of December 1917 and the first few months of 1918.

In mid-December 1917, upon the disablement of the cutter Androscoggin by a severe gale, USS Acushnet was dispatched to Miramichi Bay in New Brunswick to aid the distressed steamer Cadoras. However, she soon reported that the severe storm had forced her to heave to off Halifax, Nova Scotia, before carrying out her assignment. Before she could resume her mission, the object of her concern, Cadoras was later damaged so severely by the storm that she was abandoned as a total wreck.

Acushnet was next ordered to search the Gut of Canso for American Shipping Board vessels in distress, but soon received orders to prepare to tow and convoy the steamer War Victor to New York. Meanwhile, Acushnet carried out her assignment and reported that two of the four vessels in the Gut had been held up for want of coal; a third one was being repaired with 10 days estimated for completion of repairs; and the last, War Victor, was busily engaged in repairing a broken rudder. On 18 December, the day after the cutter had wired her report on shipping in the Gut, she radioed that she would be ready to tow and convoy War Victor as soon as she coaled, and added ominously: "Weather severe, coal scarce."

Taking advantage of a sudden change to good weather and the fact that no other vessels in the Gut required such assistance, Acushnet soon got underway from Port Hawkesbury with War Victor in tow, and reached New York on the evening of 23 December. She then received four days of needed voyage repairs at the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, N.Y., before returning to her base at New London. After taking on board hawsers and charts for Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the cutter sailed for Halifax to relieve the Navy tugs Sonoma (AT-12) and Ontario (AT-13) in standing ready to provide assistance to Shipping Board vessels in the northern waters.

On 4 January, Acushnet received word that heavy ice had closed the Gut of Canso and that passage should be made north of Cape Breton Island; in addition, she was to search for survivors of the sunken steamer Iroquois, whose men were believed to have been shipwrecked on Bird Rock, north of the Magdalen Islands. Sailing from New London that day, the ship soon encountered a fierce northern gale and anchored in Nantucket Sound to await better weather. Her captain reported that so much ice had formed on the ship from the freezing of wind-whipped spray that her stability was seriously threatened.