"Albemarle" remained at Philadelphia, fitting out, through mid-January 1941. Underway for Newport, Rhode Island on the morning of 28 January, the seaplane tender arrived at her destination on the 30th, and loaded torpedoes. She sailed the following day for Norfolk, Virginia, arriving on 1 February and, over the ensuing days, remained in that area, loading bombs and pyrotechnics and calibrating her degaussing gear, before she sailed on her shakedown cruise on the afternoon of 6 February, setting course for Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The seaplane tender shifted thence to Havana on the morning of 18 February, and over the days which followed her captain made the usual formal calls dictated by diplomatic protocol. In Havana harbor, "Albemarle" dressed ship for Washington's Birthday, her 21-gun salute to the American national holiday returned gun-for-gun by the Cuban gunboat "Yarn". On the morning of 24 February, the ship got underway for the Panama Canal Zone.