She then served in the East India Squadron, for the most part cruising along the Chinese coast to protect American citizens and to suppress pirates.

On 30 June 1861, she silenced a battery at the entrance to Qui Nhon Bay, Cochin China, which had fired upon her while she was searching for the missing boat and crew of American bark Myrtle.

Relaunched on 3 December 1862 and recommissioned on 23 March 1863, Saginaw was attached to the Pacific Squadron and operated along the United States West Coast to prevent Confederate activity.

She visited Puget Sound in the spring of 1863 to investigate reports that Confederate privateers were being outfitted in British Columbia, but returned after learning that the scheme had no chance of success.

During the closing months of the year, she escorted steamers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company carrying rich cargoes of bullion from the California gold fields.

She spent the remainder of 1865 protecting American citizens at Guaymas and other Mexican ports during the unrest and disorder which beset Mexico during the struggle between Emperor Maximilian I and Benito Juárez.

A week later, she sailed for San Francisco, intending to touch at Kure Atoll (at that time known as Ocean Island) en route home to rescue any shipwrecked sailors who might be stranded there.

On 18 November, a party of five men, headed by Lieutenant John G. Talbot, the executive officer, set out for Honolulu in a small boat to get relief for their stranded shipmates.

The US Consul authorised the despatch of a fast sailing coaster, the Kona Packet, which departed on Sunday 25 December, and the King of Hawaii, Kamehameha V, sent the inter-island steamer, Kilauea under Captain Thomas Long, to rescue the shipwrecked sailors.

The book The Wreck of the Saginaw (by Keith Robertson, The Viking Press, 1954, 144 pp) covers the voyage of the five sailors who sailed a small boat to Hawaii seeking rescue for the survivors remaining on Kure Atoll.