After commissioning and sea trials in July 1940, Bluebell was deployed on Atlantic convoy escort duties. Commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Robert Sherwood, one of her first duties, in October 1940, was to meet Convoy SC 7 mid-ocean. She rescued all 39 officers and men from the cargo steamship SS Scoresby, which had been torpedoed and sunk on 17 October. Sherwood subsequently appeared in the 1973 TV programme The World at War, in the episode Wolf Pack.