She served with distinction in the East Indies, capturing several privateers and enemy vessels, including the French corvette Iéna.

She also saw service in a variety of roles, as a troopship, a receiving ship, and a floating battery, until finally being broken up in 1814, as the Napoleonic Wars drew to a close.

The British envoy in Genoa, Francis Drake, was instructed to seek reparations from the Genoese, and to put a stop to the shipment of grain to the French Republicans.

[4] Drake was unsuccessful, so Hood sent Rear-Admiral John Gell to Genoa with orders to capture Modeste, the two tartanes and any other French ships.

Drake was to secure assurances from the Genoese that they would comply with Hood's wishes, or failing that, Gell was to blockade the port.

The Genoese broke all diplomatic ties; in response Gell's squadron began to blockade Genoa, capturing neutral merchants bound for the city.

[6] Modeste was taken into service with the Royal Navy, retaining her original name, and was commissioned in November 1793 under Captain Thomas Byam Martin.

Because Modeste served in the navy's Egyptian campaign (8 March to 8 September 1801), her officers and crew qualified for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty authorised in 1850 for all surviving claimants.

[8] Modeste then underwent a middling repair at Woolwich between April and November 1806 and was recommissioned in October that year under Captain the Honourable George Elliot.

[2] On 30 July Modeste arrived at Diamond Harbour, carrying Lord Minto who was coming to Calcutta to assume the position of Governor-General of India.

The reason Albion was carrying them was that the British merchants in Canton wanted to ship them back to Calcutta on a warship, but the Chinese authorities would not permit naval vessels to come up the Pearl River past the Bogue.

Elliot sent his boats, together with those of Terpsichore and Dasher, up the Hooghly River to Serampore to seize the Danish merchant vessels there.

[2][17] Elliot left Modeste in 1812, and was succeeded by Captain James Crawford, who on 6 February 1813 captured the 14-gun privateer Furet off Sicily.