Comus shows this transition; she was driven by both sails and a reciprocating steam engine; her hull was iron and steel but sheathed with wood and copper; and some of her muzzleloading guns were replaced by rifled breechloaders.

Comus was active for about two decades, but in that time went to the ends of empire, from the British Isles to the Caribbean and Nova Scotia to southwest Africa in the western hemisphere, and in the eastern, from the southern Indian Ocean to the northwest Pacific, and from the China station to the Strait of Magellan.

[8] Comus was fitted for sea at Sheerness and commissioned on 23 October 1879 for service on the China Station, under Captain James East and First Lieutenant (later Rear Admiral) George Neville.

[16] Later in 1882 Comus crossed the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, and refit to prepare to take the Marquis of Lorne, Governor General of Canada, and his spouse the Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria, to British Columbia.

[17] An anonymous note threatened the ship with destruction when the couple boarded, but a search yielded nothing, and the US revenue cutter Richard Rush escorted the corvette out of the harbour.

[19] The next month Comus rendered assistance to two American vessels in distress off Vancouver Island, actions for which Captain East was awarded a gold medal by the President of the United States.

In 1889 the ship transported scientists to observe the total eclipse of the sun off western Africa, and noted astronomer Stephen Joseph Perry died aboard the vessel from dysentery contracted ashore.

[25] In 1897 Comus rescued shipwrecked sailors off Acapulco in July,[26] called at Honolulu, Hawaii in September,[27] and visited Pitcairn Island in the south Pacific in November.

Comus engaged in fisheries protection, and was in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1899,[29] and in the West Indies near Trinidad in early 1900 under the command of Captain George Augustus Giffard.

[30] In late February 1900 she was ordered to return to Britain, where her officers and crew were turned over to HMS Charybdis, which took the place of Comus on the North America and West Indies Station.