She was teak built with oak main beams, had a displacement of 1,610 long tons (1,640 t), and her paddle wheels were 27 feet (8.2 m) in diameter.

The absence of the usual cast-iron framing, sway-beams, side-rods and crossheads saved upwards of 60 tons in weight.

In 1840 Gorgon saw action with three other paddle sloops, Vesuvius, Stromboli and Phoenix, in the bombardment of the city of Acre under the command of Admiral Robert Stopford.

At the height of the battle either Gorgon or the fourth-rate HMS Benbow fired the shell that destroyed Acre's powder magazine, causing an explosion that greatly weakened the city's defences.

[8] In 1843, during the Uruguayan Civil War, Gorgon arrived in the River Plate to join the Royal Navy squadron commanded by Commodore John Purvis.

[12] On 23 July, she collided with the Prussian barque Mentor in the English Channel off Beachy Head, Sussex.

[13][14] From August 1856 – June 1857 HMS Gorgon was at Boudroum (modern Bodrum) under Captain George William Towsey, commissioned to transport the finds from Sir Charles Thomas Newton's excavation at the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos to the British Museum.

When the cable link was completed to New York, the crew of the Gorgon and the other ships were feted by civic receptions and processions through the city.

The vessel was towed to Greenhithe on 6 May 1864 to act as a receiving hulk for the crew of HMS Osborne, seven of whom had acquired smallpox.