Anacréon was built in 1798 at Dunkirk by the brother of her first commander, Jean Blankeman,[2][a] reportedly to a design by Louis-Jean-Baptiste Bretocq.

[4][5] On 23 December, Anacréon, Captain Blankman, captured the brigantine Aurora, in the North Sea while she was sailing from Riga to Lisbon.

James Sime, the late master of Aurora, reported in February 1799 that while he was in Bergen, the crew of Anacréon blackened her sails with coal dust to disguise her as a collier.

[c] Captain Graham Eden Hammond of Champion described her as "almost a new Vessel, sails remarkably fast, is Copper-bottomed, and seems fit for His Majesty's Service.

[1] It's reported on 9 November 1799 in the Hampshire Telegraph and Naval Chronicle that HMS frigate Nemesis, with the Anacreon sloop, and the Nile, Resolution, and Fanny hired armed luggers, have sailed on a cruise off the Coast of France.

[9] On 27 November 1799, the hired armed cutter Kent captured the French lugger privateer Quatre Freres (Four Brothers) five leagues off the North Foreland.

Four Brothers was under the command of Citizen Charles Desobier and carried four 4-pounders, swivel guns, small arms, and a crew of 24.

[14] Also that month she captured five fishing vessels, Françoise, Bonne Nouvelle, Mentor, St Pierre, and Jacques.

The smugglers lost two men killed and two wounded, and 700 tubs of spirits that Anacreon seized and carried into Dover.

[17] On 26 November 1801, the Swedish East Indiaman Sophia Magdalena ran onshore near Kingsdown on the South Foreland.