After a decade of peacetime service on the China Station, she escorted Atlantic convoys through World War II.

The turbines developed a total of 2,000 shaft horsepower (1,500 kW) and were designed to give a maximum speed of 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h; 19.0 mph).

[4][9] While ordered for service in the Persian Gulf, both Sandwich and her sister ship Bridgewater were first deployed to the China Station, replacing the old sloops Foxglove and Bluebell.

[14][15] In January 1938, as the Second Sino-Japanese War continued, Sandwich landed men at Weihaiwei to protect British property against rioting as Japanese forces advanced towards the city.

[11] Sandwich was based at Hong Kong when war was declared, and patrolled the Tsushima Strait for German merchant shipping before sailing east in November 1939 to return to the United Kingdom in December with convoy HG 11.

[2] Others say that she was renamed Prince Albert in 1946, then owned by Hui Bon Hua of Tunis and registered at that port as the mercantile Amoy.

On 18 February 1948 Amoy foundered outside Port La Nouvelle, on a voyage from Oran to Sète with a cargo of oranges.