HMS Friendship was a 4-gun single-masted cutter of the Royal Navy, purchased in 1763 for coastal patrol duties in the immediate aftermath of the Seven Years' War with France.

Friendship was one of thirty cutters ordered to be purchased by the Royal Navy in three month from December 1762 to February 1763 for coastal duties off English ports.

[1] The function of these purchased cutters included convoy and patrol, the carrying of messages between Navy vessels in port and assisting the press gang in the interception of merchant craft.

[1] On 8 April 1763 the newly purchased cutter was sailed to Woolwich Dockyard for fitting out as a Navy craft.

Despite this, commissioning went ahead in April 1763 and the vessel entered the Navy as a patrol cutter in Start Bay off Devon.