As an auxiliary steam packet, she helped pioneer commercial steamer service between New York City and Liverpool, England.

[1] The Joint Commission consisted of three army engineers: Maj. John L. Smith, Maj. Cornelius A. Ogden[2] and 1st Lt. Danville Leadbetter; and three naval officers: Comdr.

[5] When they returned in March 1850, the Joint Commission made its preliminary recommendations to president Millard Fillmore as to reservations of islands and lands around San Francisco Bay,[6] then they and the Massachusetts sailed up to Puget Sound.

[3] After a trip to San Diego, the Joint Commission made its final recommendation on 30 November 1850, by which time the Massachusetts either had begun regular Navy duties, or was transporting other personnel surveying the west coast.

[citation needed] She departed San Francisco for the east coast 12 August 1852; steamed via ports in Ecuador, Chile, and Brazil; and arrived Norfolk, Virginia, 17 March 1853.

After fitting out, she departed for the Pacific Ocean 5 July, reached the Straits of Magellan 13 December, and arrived at the Mare Island Navy Yard, 8 May 1855.

She operated in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca for more than a year, visiting ports in Washington Territory and the British Crown Colony of Vancouver Island.

She was turned over to the Army Quartermaster Corps in May 1859 and during the next few years cruised Puget Sound "for the protection of the inhabitants of that quarter", which was going through rapid change and an influx of miners and settlers as a consequence of the Fraser Gold Rush and successive rushes just to the north in the Colony of British Columbia, and also as part of US military force assembled in the area during the period of confrontation with the Royal Navy and Royal Marines known as the Pig War, a bloodless though tense dispute over the boundary through the San Juan Islands.