Hermitage participated in exercises with NATO units and visited Sicily, Crete, Turkey, Italy, Greece, and Spain before returning to the States on 16 November 1957.

With a cargo of Presidential helicopters embarked, Hermitage sailed to Karachi on 2 December via the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Suez Canal, and Red and Arabian seas to furnish transportation for President Dwight D. Eisenhower on his Asian and European tour.

In the midst of this important cruise, Hermitage was diverted on 19 January 1961 to carry grain to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help the United Nations combat starvation in that country.

A second cruise to the Mediterranean from May to October 1963 took Hermitage to Naples, Athens, Genoa, Cannes, Sardinia, Malta, and Rota, Spain as well as other ports in the 6th Fleet's area.

After an assignment in February 1964 to the Caribbean Ready Squadron 12 based in Panama, early in May Hermitage undertook a logistics lift to Bermuda, and Sydney and Halifax, Nova Scotia, and in the fall took part until late November in the Navy-Marine Corps peacetime exercise "Operation Steel Pike I", visiting ports of Málaga and Gibraltar.

In June 1965 she participated in a three-month deployment to the Caribbean area during the later stages of the Dominican Republic crisis, making practice amphibious landings at Vieques Island.

[2] In the Comissão Haiti XXI voyage in April 2015, the ship suffered 'engine problems' that left her adrift 500 nautical miles away from Belém, off the coast of French Guiana.