Eight days later she reached Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and began almost 12 years of training submarine crews and testing equipment.

En route she called at San Diego; voyaged south to the Panama Canal Zone; negotiated the Panama Canal; then voyaged north through the Caribbean Sea and the coastal waters of the US East Coast; and, finally, up Delaware Bay and the Delaware River to Philadelphia.

On 15 May 1931, R-19 was decommissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and placed in the reserve fleet at that shipyard, where she remained berthed at League Island for the next nine years.

For the remainder of the spring, summer, and into the fall of 1941, she patrolled and conducted training exercises in the Virgin Islands and off the Panama Canal Zone.

Unaware of any friendly submarines in the area and receiving no reply to her challenge, Georgian rammed P.514, which sank with the loss of all hands.