[1] On 9 November 1917, Surveyor was ordered to report to Squadron Two, Patrol Force, based at Gibraltar[1] to provide convoy escort services.

[1] Surveyor was struck from the Navy List and returned to the United States Department of Commerce on 31 March 1919.

[2] For the next 36 years, Surveyor operated almost exclusively in the waters of the Territory of Alaska, working in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea.

On 4 October 1927, two men from her crew — Roy V. Beverly and George Slavin — drowned at Resurrection Bay off Seward; another crewman, Seaman W. H. Bowen, drowned in a heroic attempt to save his two shipmates, and posthumously received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal.

[5] In 1936, she lost members of her crew on three occasions: John Martin, her ship's cook, died in a shipboard accident in January 1936;[5] two members of a shore party – Lieutenant, junior grade, Marshall R. Reese of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps and Quartermaster Max McLees — drowned on 26 September 1936 when their boat overturned on the north shore of Unalaska Island in the Aleutian Islands;[5] and Seaman Robert F. Stryker died in October 1936 when he fell off a cliff during survey operations on Unimak Island in the Aleutians.