Departing New York on 8 June, Swatara transported five scientific parties to the South Pacific to observe the transit of Venus. Swatara debarked the first team at Hobart, Tasmania, on 1 October 1874 before touching at Kerguelen Island; Queenstown, Tasmania; New Zealand; and Chatham Island. She returned all but one of the parties, picked up by USS Monongahela, to Melbourne early in 1875 and eventually arrived at New York on 31 May 1875 via the Cape of Good Hope. Assigned to the North Atlantic Squadron, Swatara cruised in Atlantic and Caribbean waters into 1878. While anchored in a harbor of Pará, Brazil, on 1 December 1875, Captain of the Top Michael Deneef jumped overboard and rescued a shipmate from drowning, for which he was later awarded the Medal of Honor. Entering the Boston Navy Yard