For most of her career Fowey was assigned to a split duty station cruising the coast of North America from South Carolina to Boston during the summer and operating out of Port Antonio, Jamaica and the Caribbean in the winter.

While escorting this prize and two British colonial merchant vessels to her summer duty station off Virginia, Fowey ran onto a reef off of Hawk Channel and sank on 26 June.

However, from work commenced in the United Kingdom, by Major Paul Payne, who held an artefact from the original crew, navigational data became available, from which Mr Fischer narrowed the search.

In the twenty five years since the wreck was identified, HMS Fowey has been broadly studied in the surviving documentary records of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain and has been the subject of three National Park Service field projects.

Evidence of the wreck's function as a Royal Naval vessel include iron ballast blocks and guns, and copper gunpowder barrel hoops marked with the Broad Arrow denoting ownership by the crown.