On 25 August 1877, Alliance sailed from Smyrna for Salonika in company with Rear Admiral John L. Worden's flagship, Trenton, and reached that port five days later.

Having spent eight months in the eastern Mediterranean, Alliance sailed for Villefranche in early January 1878, but returned to Smyrna on 24 February, bringing with her quantities of stores to be distributed among the ships of the squadron.

Less than two weeks later, while she lay at the Piraeus, the ship received the King and Queen of Greece, who, after inspecting the flagship, "remained a considerable time on board" Alliance, and departed on 26 March.

That year, she captured the one-gun Colombian privateer brigantine Ambrose Light, which was filled with heavily armed sailors and ammunition.

In 1902, the ship visited Queenstown, Ireland; Lisbon, Portugal; Algiers, and Madeira before undergoing voyage repairs at the Norfolk Navy Yard; subsequently, the ship sailed south to Trinidad, St. Kitts, San Juan, and Jamaica, before arriving back in Hampton Roads on 13 June 1903.

Regarded as "unserviceable for war purposes", she was decommissioned at San Juan on 7 July 1911, and her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 9 August 1911.