She served extensively and relatively independently in the Adriatic and the Western Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars, with her boats performing many cutting out expeditions, one of which earned for her crew the Naval General Service Medal.

By the time that Captain Henry Duncan commissioned her in March 1807,[2] the Admiralty had added two brass howitzers to her armament, while exchanging her 9-pounders for 32-pounder carronades.

Porcupine entered service in March 1807, operating in the Mediterranean Fleet during the Napoleonic Wars under the command of Captain Henry Duncan.

Detached to serve on independent command in the Adriatic Campaign, Porcupine fought numerous minor actions with shore batteries and coastal merchant ships.

[5] Then on 7 October Porcupine chased a trabaccolo into the harbour of Zupaino on Šipan (Giuppana), the largest of the Elaphiti Islands.

Safo belonged to a division of gunboats deployed to protect the coast and had been sent out from Ragusa (Dubrovnik) three days earlier.

[6][a] Between 23 September and 23 November, Porcupine captured some 40 enemy vessels, most of which were carrying grain and wine between Ragusa and Catero (Kotor).

Two days later Price went into the harbour of Zuliano where he destroyed several small vessels and wine in warehouses that was intended for French troops.

[6] Next, Duncan was ordered to cruise in the Western Mediterranean off Naples and continued his successful operations against coastal shipping.

[6][8] However, on 9 July Duncan spotted an enemy merchant vessel, and her escorts, two gunboats, each armed with a 24-pounder gun, all sailing along the coast.

In the attack, the British suffered eight men wounded, including Lieutenant Price, who was severely injured in his head and leg.

Lieutenant Smith took in the boats and destroyed the polacca, which was of about 200 tons burthen (bm) and which had been carrying a cargo of iron hoops and staves.

[6] After dark on 8 August, Porcupine, still under the command of Duncan, had her cutter and jolly boat under Lieutenant Francis Smith cut out a vessel she had run ashore on the island of Pianosa.

On that day the sailing master for Porcupine impressed an American sailor, Isaac Clark, from Jane out of Norfolk, Virginia.

Elliott tore up the seaman's protection (a document attesting to his being an American citizen and so exempt from British impressment), declaring the man an Englishman.

Porcupine, while under command of Captain John Goode and carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Charles Penrose, through early 1814 operated against French coastal positions and squadrons.

[13] On the morning of 23 February 1814, she and the other vessels of Penrose's flotilla assisted the British Army in its crossing of the Ardour river, near Bayonne.

[14] In this service two of Porcupine's seamen drowned, as did some others from the flotilla when boats overturned crossing the bar on the coast.

[15] On 2 April Captain Goode, who had ascended the Gironde above Pouillac, sent Porcupine's boats, under the orders of Lieutenant Robert Graham Dunlop, to pursue a French flotilla that was proceeding down from Blaye to Tallemont.

[13] As the British boats approached them, the French flotilla ran on shore under the cover of about 200 troops from Blaye who lined the beach.

On 4 November she sailed to the Coast of Africa and thence to the Cape of Good Hope before coming back to Sierra Leone on 29 April 1815.

[19] In January 1819, the London Gazette reported that Parliament had voted a grant to all those who had served under the command of Lord Viscount Keith in 1812, between 1812 and 1814, and in the Gironde.