Vandalia was soon deployed with the European Squadron and spent most of the next three years cruising in the Mediterranean along the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey.

[3] The ship put into Villefranche, France, in October 1877, and left on 13 December with the former President, General Ulysses S. Grant, and his party as passengers.

During the next three months, the screw sloop of war touched at ports in Italy, Egypt, Turkey, and Greece before Grant and his party disembarked at Naples on 18 March 1878.

The sloop left New York on 14 August, heading westward for duty with the Pacific Squadron as the flagship of Rear Admiral Lewis Kimberly.

Vandalia remained with the squadron into 1889, seeing duty in the Hawaiian Islands and Samoa, as well as along the Pacific coasts of North, Central, and South America.

On 15 and 16 March 1889, each of these vessels suddenly became trapped in the harbor when violent, hurricane-force winds roared out of the northeast, driving mountainous waves before them in the 1889 Apia cyclone.