Following shakedown off the New England coast, Roper sailed east in mid-June 1919 and, after stops at Ponta Delgada, Gibraltar, and Malta, anchored in the Bosporus on 5 July.

For the next month she supported Peace Commission and Relief Committee work in the Black Sea area, carrying mail and passengers to and from Constantinople, Novorossisk, Batum, Samsun, and Trebizond.

Operating primarily in the southern California area, in active and rotating reserve squadrons, for the next seven years, she deployed to Panama, to Hawaii and to the Caribbean for fleet problems and maneuvers in 1931, 1933, 1935, and 1936.

During 1933, Lieutenant, junior grade Robert A. Heinlein, who would later gain fame as a science fiction author, transferred aboard Roper.

Off Cape Cod on 7 December 1941, it returned to Norfolk for an abbreviated availability at midmonth, and then steamed to NS Argentia, Newfoundland.

According to the after-action report, the attack occurred after midnight local time after Roper closed to identify an unknown contact (U-85) and was narrowly missed by a torpedo before opening fire.

The commanding officer delayed rescue operations until daybreak and after the arrival of air support from a PBY Catalina and an airship due to concern of an attack by a second U-boat.

[8] On 29 April, Roper rescued 14 survivors from the British merchantman Empire Drum, which had been torpedoed and sunk by U-136 five days earlier.

In February of that year, it shifted to Caribbean–Mediterranean convoy work and remained on that duty until October when it entered the Charleston Navy Yard for conversion to a high-speed transport.

[1] Reclassified and given hull classification symbol APD-20 (transport destroyer) on 20 October 1943, Roper departed Charleston in late November and trained in the Chesapeake Bay area and off the Florida coast into the new year, 1944.

On 5 September she returned to Italy; resumed runs between Naples and Oran, and, in early December departed the latter port for Hampton Roads.

[1] Ordered back to the United States to complete repairs, she departed the Ryukyus on 6 June and reached San Pedro a month later.

Decommissioned on 15 September 1945, Roper's name was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 11 October 1945, and her hulk was sold to the Lerner Company, Oakland, California.