Highflyer was ordered as a small wooden frigate to a design by the Surveyor's Department of the Admiralty on 25 April 1847; she and her sister Esk were re-designated as corvettes in 1854.

Her geared two-cylinder horizontal single-expansion steam engine, provided by Maudslay, Sons & Field, developed 702 indicated horsepower (523 kW) and drove a single screw.

[2] After recommissioning at Portsmouth under Captain Charles Shadwell on 1 August 1856, she sailed for the China Station, where she took part in the Second Opium War.

Highflyer paid off at Portsmouth on 31 May 1861, but recommissioned again on 15 December 1864 under Captain Thomas Malcolm Sabine Pasley, for the Cape of Good Hope and East Indies Stations.

There are references to service in the Persian Gulf - in January 1866, Highflyer bombarded a disputed fort at Al Zorah, in Ajman.