The ship was initially assigned to the Home Fleet, although she was temporarily deployed in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean during the Abyssinia Crisis of 1935–36.

Crescent carried a maximum of 473 long tons (481 t) of fuel oil that gave her a range of 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi) at 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph).

Crescent was detached from the Home Fleet during the Abyssinian Crisis, and deployed in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea from September 1935 to April 1936.

In November the Royal Navy's North America and West Indies Station took operational control of the Canadian destroyers.

[6] The ship escorted the convoy bringing most of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division to Britain part way across the North Atlantic in mid-December.

[7] In March 1940 she was ordered to join the Jamaica Force for Caribbean patrols[6] before being reassigned to Western Approaches Command two months later.

[1] On 26 May she left Bermuda for Britain and arrived at Plymouth on 3 June where she was pressed into service evacuating Allied troops from various French ports on the Atlantic coast.

Many of the survivors from Fraser transferred that later summer to HMCS Margaree, and were lost when that vessel sank on 22 October 1940 as a result of a collision with the freighter MV Port Fairy.