After overhaul at Boston Navy Yard, she stood out of Hampton Roads on a midshipman cruise to Plymouth, England; Cherbourg, France; and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

She finished out the year with a midshipman training cruise to Northern Europe, duty in the Mediterranean which included special antisubmarine warfare (ASW) demonstrations, and hunter-killer (HUK) operations along the eastern seaboard from Norfolk.

During the last week of November and the early part of December 1959, Robert L. Wilson and two other escort destroyers participated in Operation "Monsoon," manning sea-air rescue stations for the Presidential flight to Europe from the United States.

Returning to Caribbean and Atlantic operations, in January 1961 Robert L. Wilson pursued the Portuguese liner SS Santa Maria which had been seized by a group of revolutionaries.

After serving as gunfire support ship at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in late January and early February 1966, Robert L. Wilson was assigned the abort station for the first unmanned Apollo space shot.

She then undertook search and rescue duty in the Gulf of Tonkin after 28 October, destroying two sampans with .50 caliber machine gun fire and hand grenades.

Robert L. Wilson returned to San Diego from the Far East on 27 March 1969, and operated off the west coast until transiting the Panama Canal and arriving Norfolk on 21 June.

During this Mediterranean cruise, Wilson participated in two combined NATO exercises, DAWN PATROL and MEDTACEX, and was, for a time, diverted to the Levantine Basin due to another Middle East crisis.