She was laid down as a corvette of 22 guns of the Jason class, and was selected for conversion after being two years on the builder's slipway.

She was regarded as a good sea-boat, but rolled more than most; her armament could therefore only have been fought in smooth water, and the movement of the forward or after guns to fire through the axial recesses would have been hazardous in the extreme in anything other than smooth water.

She was commissioned at Sheerness for the North America and West Indies station, returning home in August 1869 for refit.

She was First Reserve guardship on the east coast of Scotland from 1872 to 1876, in succession to HMS Repulse.

[citation needed] On 3 August 1875, she ran aground on the Scroby Sands, Norfolk.