 "Topeka", transited the Strait of Gibraltar on 5 January 1901 and, after visits to the Azores and to St. Vincent and Barbados in the West Indies, returned to the United States at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 4 March 1901.For more than a year, "Topeka" operated along the southeastern coast of the United States and in the West Indies, working out of Norfolk and the South Carolina ports of Charleston and Port Royal.On 16 May 1902, the gunboat cleared Port Royal and headed — via Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and San Juan, Puerto Rico to the Caribbean for a summer training cruise in the waters off Venezuela.