HMS Espiegle was a Doterel-class sloop of the Royal Navy, built at the Devonport Dockyard and launched on 3 August 1880.

[2] The Doterel class was designed by Nathaniel Barnaby as a development of William Henry White's 1874 Osprey-class sloop.

The graceful clipper bow of the Ospreys was replaced by a vertical stem and the engines were more powerful.

[1] All the ships of the class were provided with a barque rig,[1] that is, square-rigged foremast and mainmast, and fore-and-aft sails only on the mizzen mast.

She was fitted out as a boom defence vessel in 1899 and stationed at Southampton; she was renamed Argo in 1902.