On 24 May 1924, she stood out of
New York Harbor for her shakedown cruise in the
Mediterranean Sea. On 14 August 1924, while in transit from
Port Said,
Egypt, to
Aden, Arabia, she was ordered to
Bushire,
Persia. She arrived on 25 August, and took on board the remains of Vice Consul
Robert Imbrie. She received and returned the gun salute to the late vice consul and departed the same day. Following stops at
Suez and Port Said, Egypt; and at
Villefranche,
France;
Trenton arrived at the
Washington Navy Yard on 29 September 1924. During the ensuing fire,
Ensign Henry Clay Drexler and
Boatswain's Mate First Class George Cholister attempted to dump powder charges into the immersion tank before they detonated but failed. Ensign Drexler was killed when the charge exploded, and Boatswain's Mate Cholister was overcome by fire and fumes before he could reach his objective. He died the following day. Both men were awarded the
Medal of Honor, posthumously. Following that mission, the light cruiser operated along the
United States East Coast until 3 February 1925, when she departed Philadelphia to join the rest of the Scouting Fleet off
Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba. After gunnery exercises, the fleet headed for the
Panama Canal and transited it in mid-month. On 23 February, the combined forces of the Battle Fleet and Scouting Fleet departed
Balboa,
Panama, and steamed north to
San Diego.
En route, the ships participated in a fleet problem, then assembled in the San Diego-
San Francisco area. On 15 April, the US Fleet put to sea for the Central Pacific and conducted another battle problem
en route — this one designed to test fully the defenses of the Hawaiian Islands. After reaching Hawaiian waters, the Fleet as a whole conducted tactical exercises there until 7 June, when most of the Scouting Fleet headed back toward the Atlantic. On one occasion, she put a landing force ashore at Zhifu. In May 1929, Trenton's division was detached from the Asiatic Fleet, and she steamed back to the United States along with
Memphis and . The light cruiser was overhauled at Philadelphia in the latter part of 1929, and then rejoined the Scouting Fleet. For the next four years,
Trenton resumed the Scouting Fleet schedule of winter maneuvers in the Caribbean followed by summer exercises off the
New England coast. Periodically, however, she was ordered to the Isthmian coast to bolster the Special Service Squadron during periods of extreme political unrest in one or more of the republics of Central America. In the spring of 1933,
Trenton moved to the Pacific and became flagship of the Battle Force cruisers. She operated in the eastern Pacific until September 1934. At that time, the ship returned to the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal to cruise with the Special Service Squadron. Over the next 15 months, Trenton visited ports in the Caribbean, in Central America, and South America as the squadron conducted a good-will cruise to Latin America. In January 1936, she retransited the canal and, after an overhaul at the
Mare Island Navy Yard, rejoined the Battle Force until late in the spring of 1939. During that period, she made her second cruise to Australia in the winter of 1937 and 1938, for the sesquicentennial of the first colonization of that continent. In May 1939, she returned to the Atlantic and, after a stop at Hampton Roads, got underway on 3 June for Europe. There she joined Squadron 40-T, a small American naval force which had been organized in 1936, to evacuate United States citizens from
Spain and to protect American interests during the Spanish Civil War.
Trenton patrolled the western Mediterranean and waters off the coast of the
Iberian Peninsula until mid-July 1940, when she returned to the United States. During her homeward voyage, the light cruiser carried Luxembourg's royal family then in flight from Nazi aggression. ==World War II==