Sailing for home on 1 October, the detachment made stops at Devonport, England; Brest, France; Lisbon, Portugal; the Azores; and Bermuda; before arriving in New York on 20 November.

Assigned to Division 2 of Mine Squadron 2 of the Atlantic Fleet, Swan completed final acceptance trials in the spring of 1920 and began routine operations out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in late June.

These operations included buoy work and wreck salvage, and the latter duty is what brought the minesweeper into Cape Cod Bay in November of that year.

On 28 November, during an attempt to refloat a wrecked oil barge, heavy seas came up quickly and cast Swan on the beach in Cape Cod Bay.

The stranded minesweeper survived the winter on the beach and was refloated on 22 February 1921 and towed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for repairs.

That fall, she was assigned to the Washington Navy Yard but operated out of Quantico, Virginia, where she provided target and other fleet services.

By the spring of 1926, Swan changed duty stations again, this time working for the 15th Naval District out of Coco Solo in the Panama Canal Zone.

In anticipation of Amelia Earhart's flight from Howland Island to Honolulu, the Swan was one of two ships directed by the Chief of Naval Operations to act as a plane guard.

She was overhauled there and, after loading ammunition and supplies at Kaneohe Naval Air Station, from 28 to 30 October got underway to return to the South Pacific.

Swan returned to Pearl Harbor on 23 March and, from then until the beginning of May, she assisted the fleet air wing by towing targets for bombing practice.

Between 1 and 7 June, she made another round-trip voyage to French Frigate Shoals and back, then resumed target towing and torpedo recovery duty.

Her name was struck from the Navy List on 8 January 1946 and, just over nine months later, on 12 October, her hulk was delivered to the Maritime Commission at Newport, Rhode Island, for disposal.