He sailed her to St Petersburg, the West Indies, back to England from Havana, then to Quebec, and finally to Malta.

Captain Sir Augustus William James Clifford recommissioned Herald on 27 May 1826 to carry the Duke of Devonshire on an embassy to Russia.

[1] On 26 August 1839, Herald and HMS Pelorus attempted to scuttle the British merchant ship Lucretia, which had caught fire off Kyardbilly's point, Sydney, New South Wales.

[2] On 29 April 1840 Nias sailed Herald, with Major Thomas Bunbury of the 80th Regiment (appointed by Governor William Hobson as Commissioner) and Edward Marsh Williams as interpreter, to take a copy of the Treaty of Waitangi (known as the "Herald-Bunbury" copy) to the South Island of New Zealand to obtain signatures from Māori chiefs as part the process of claiming British sovereignty over New Zealand.

[6] Herald was assigned in 1848 to join the search for Sir John Franklin, whose ships had disappeared exploring the Northwest Passage.

[9] In 1848 and 1849 Herald returned south in the months of the northern winter to continue surveying work in Panama, Costa Rica, and the Gulf of California.

In October 1850, Herald left the Arctic, and sailed for home via Hawaii, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Spithead on 6 June 1851, thus completing a six-year circumnavigation of the globe.

[12][13] From 1852 to 1861, under the command of Captain Henry Mangles Denham, Herald carried out a survey of the Australian coast and Fiji Islands, continuing the mission of HMS Rattlesnake.

The naturalists on the voyage were John MacGillivray (1821–1867), William Milne (botanist) and Denis Macdonald as Assistant Surgeon-zoologist.

[14] : 1–26  The rset of the year 1853 was spent surveying Lord Howe Island and the nearby Ball's Pyramid and in New Caledonia and Vanuatu.

Herald surveyed in the south of Fiji, and obtained accurate positions for the Minerva Reefs, and also enabled numerous doubtful hazards to be removed from the charts.

[15] Herald then surveyed the southern and western coasts of Australia as far as Shark Bay, returning to Sydney on 29 June 1858.

Herald left Sydney on 17 August 1860 to chart reefs and take deep-sea soundings in preparation for telegraphic cable-laying.

David (1995) gives a very detailed account of the voyage, and reproduces many of the drawings and paintings produced by James Glen Wilson.