A former trading boat, the Drake was purchased and fitted out by the Royal Navy in 1777, to serve during the American Revolutionary War.

The Drake had 3 masts, 5 windows at the stern gallery, a quarter-deck, a figurehead representing a warrior in armour with a sword (probably the King of England Charles II).

[3][citation needed] On 24 April 1778, off Carrickfergus in northern Ireland, she fought the North Channel naval duel with the 18-gun sloop Ranger of the Continental Navy, commanded by Captain John Paul Jones.

[4][5] At Brest, Jones sold Drake to his friend Jonathan Williams, who handed her over the next year to Jean Peltier-Dudoyer in Nantes.

She sailed again to Isle de France in November, left on 1 December 1782, and arrived at Trincomalee in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) on 10 March 1783.

Suffren sailed home, but de Pernier stayed in the Indian Ocean with five ships-of-the-line and some frigates and sloops-of-war.

From December 1784 to February 1786, the Drake, captained by Pierre Arnoult Deshayes, was sent by Governor Marquis de Bussy from Pondicherry, India, to Bago, Burma, to assist another royal flûte, the Baleine.

As for the Drake, her departure from Bago, which was scheduled for March 1785, was delayed by eleven months, first because of a bill of exchange having not been paid in Pondicherry, and secondly because of war suddenly breaking out between the Burmese and the Siamese.