HMS Buffalo was a storeship under construction as the merchant vessel Fremantle when the Royal Navy purchased her on the stocks.

[3] Between 1792 and 1797 he had visited New South Wales and sailed between Australia and the Cape, Bengal, and Java as captain of the merchant ship Britannia.

Buffalo arrived at Port Jackson on 25 April 1799, having brought cattle from the Cape of Good Hope.

The "Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy" first offered the "Buffalo sloop, of 463 tons", lying at Cowes, for sale on 3 April 1817.

[1] This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project.