USS Pilgrim, a 98-ton patrol motorboat, was originally built in 1893 at Wilmington, Delaware, for the Beaufort Fish Scrap and Oil Company of New Bern, North Carolina. She was leased by the Navy in July 1917, armed and commissioned with the designation SP-1204. Pilgrim operated in the North Carolina Sounds area through the rest of World War I. She was decommissioned in January 1919 and returned to her owner.