[1] He was present off Charleston, South Carolina, during the Nullification Crisis of 1832, and next served aboard the schooner USS Experiment in the Chesapeake Bay in 1833.

[1] Promoted to passed midshipman on 14 June 1834,[1][2] he was aboard the sloop-of-war USS Vandalia in the West Indies Squadron from 1835 to 1836,[1] seeing service in the Second Seminole War.

He spent 1837 awaiting orders, but returned to sea aboard Vandalia in the West Indies Squadron from 1838 to 1839, seeing further Second Seminole War service.

She captured the blockade runner Saloon off Tampico, Mexico, on 10 October 1861 and towed her to Key West Florida, and then on to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Maratanza immediately went to work on the York and James rivers in Virginia in support of the Army of the Potomac's Peninsula Campaign.

Under his command, De Soto patrolled off Northeast Providence Channel in the Bahamas and off Mobile Bay, Alabama, where she captured the steamer Cumberland and her cargo of arms, ammunition, and gunpowder on 5 February 1864.

[7] The most significant crisis of his tenure as commander-in-chief was the Virginius Affair, which took place in November 1873 when the Spanish Navy screw corvette Tornado captured the fast American sidewheel steamer SS Virginius, operated by an American and British crew and hired by Cuban insurrectionists to land men and munitions in Cuba for use against Spanish forces during Cuba's Ten Years' War.

Temporarily turning his ships over to Case for the fleet exercises on 3 January 1874, Scott departed Key West aboard his flagship, the sloop-of-war USS Worcester, for his special mission.

By the time he returned on 1 April 1874, Case had completed the exercises and departed, and Scott resumed his normal duties as commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Squadron.