HMS Derwent was launched in 1807 and later that year became one of the first ships sent by the British Royal Navy to suppress the slave trade.

Parker sailed for the west coast of Africa on 17 November in company with the fifth-rate frigate HMS Solebay and Tigress, the transport Agincourt, the colonial schooner George, and some merchant vessels, all bound for Sierra Leone.

The warships were the first ships in the West Africa Squadron that the British government had established to interdict the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.

When the vessels arrived at Gorée, Columbine and Major Charles William Maxwell, the commander of the British garrison there, decided to make an attack on Senegal to prevent French privateers from continuing to use it as a base.

Captain Columbine appointed his First Lieutenant, Joseph Swabey Tetley, to the command of Derwent in Parker's place.

[c] She had been sailing from London to Gibraltar when the American privateer Paul Jones had captured her near Lisbon on 20 January after a three-hour fight.

[13] On 24 December Lloyd's List reported that Derwent had recaptured Racehorse, which the French privateer Diligent, of 14 guns and 120 men, had captured.

Derwent herself lost her bowsprit in the storm and had to throw some guns overboard, but arrived safely at St Andero with three transports.

The "Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy" offered the "Derwent sloop, of 382 tons", "Lying at Chatham", for sale on 7 March 1817.