Søeormen served throughout her nineteen years in the Great Belt off Nyborg, as a guardship in the 1790s[4][5] and as a tender to the cadet training ship (along with Brevdrageren in 1801 and Fama in 1803) from 1801 to 1803.

[9] When word of the uprising of the Spanish against the French in 1808 reached Denmark, some 12,000 Spanish troops of the Division of the North stationed in Denmark and under the Marquis de la Romana decided that they wished to leave French service and return to Spain.

The Marquis contacted Rear-Admiral Keats, on Superb, who was in command of a small British squadron in the Kattegat.

[10][c] The British commissioned the cutter under the name Salorman and appointed Lieutenant Andrew Duncan to command her.

[1] On 22 December 1808, Salorman was part of the escort of the last British convoy of the year leaving the Baltic.

Duncan steered her towards Ystad, Sweden, but a blinding snowstorm developed that obliterated the sight of land.

[15] The convoy and its escorts were ill-fated, with Magnet and Fama[16] also being lost, as were most of the merchantmen, many of which the Danes captured or destroyed.