USS Alcedo sunk 5 November 1917

The terrain of human history seems an increasingly featureless as our viewpoint in time and space becomes more distant. 

Zoom in on one distant terrain feature, the first U.S. vessel sunk in World War One:

"Alcedo, a 981 gross ton steam yacht built in 1895 at Glasgow, Scotland, was purchased by the U.S. Navy in June 1917 and placed in commission as USS Alcedo (SP-166) late in July. She crossed the Atlantic the next month to join the patrol forces fighting enemy U-boats in the waters off western Europe. In the early hours of 5 November 1917, while she was escorting a convoy en route to Brest, France, Alcedo was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UC-71. Twenty-one of her crew were lost with their ship."