The Admiralty ordered her construction on 30 April 1795, and the keel was laid at the Dudman's yard at Deptford Wharf in September of that year.

The Sirius class of 1795 was established following the taking of the San Fiorenzo from the Spanish in 1794, upon whose lines this frigate was based.

[3] In the action of 24 October 1798, Sirius captured two Batavian Navy warships, the frigate Furie and corvette Waakzaamheid in the Texel.

[4] Waakzaamheid was under the command of Senior Captain Meindert van Neirop, and was armed with twenty-four 9-pounder guns on her main deck and two 6-pounders on her forecastle.

She had 100 Batavian sailors and officers as well as 122 French soldiers aboard her, and was carrying 2,000 stands of arms as well as other ordnance stores.

[5] Furie was under the command of Bartholomeus Pletz and armed with twenty-six 12-pounders on her main deck and ten 6-pounders on her quarter-deck and forecastle.

The British vessels included Clyde, Fisguard, and Sylph, as well as the hired armed cutters Joseph, Fowey and Dolly.

[7] Then on 6 January 1800 Sirius shared with Defiance, Unicorn, Indefatigable and Stag in the capture of the French brig Ursule.

[11] Cultivator, Smith, master, had been sailing from Demerara to London when the French privateer Minerve, of Bordeaux, had captured her.

Captain King reported the capture in order to draw attention to the fact that she was the only vessel to have left A Coruña since August.

[34] Entering battle to the north of the weather column, her station placed her only a few cable lengths from HMS Victory.

[d] In 1847 the Admiralty would issue surviving claimants from the battle the Naval General Service Medal with clasp "Trafalgar".

[37] In January 1806, Sirius and the 64-gun Polyphemus were escorting a convoy from Gibraltar when they encountered a French squadron under Admiral Willaumez.

On 17 April 1806 at 2pm Sirius was five or six leagues off Civitavecchia when Prowse received intelligence that a French force had sailed that morning for Naples.

The force consisted of a ship, three corvettes, and five heavy gun-vessels, and they were deployed in line of battle near a dangerous shoal, awaiting Sirius's attack.

[39] The captured vessel was the Bergère, which was under the command of capitaine de frégate Charles-Jacques-César Chaunay-Duclos,[40] commodore of the flotilla and member of the Legion of Honor.

[39] This action too qualified the surviving claimants for the Naval General Service Medal, this time with the clasp "Sirius 17 April 1806".

[42] In August Sirius joined a squadron under Commodore Josias Rowley and on 21 September participated in an attack on Saint-Paul, Réunion.

In August, they turned their attention to Mauritius, where they attempted to land troops to destroy coastal batteries and signals around Grand Port.

The attempt turned sour, however, when two French forty-gun frigates, Bellone and Minerve, the 18-gun corvette Victor, and two East Indiaman prizes entered the harbour and took up defensive positions at the head of the main entrance channel.

Once the French flag was hoisted on what was left of the foremast of the Néréide, Magicienne and the Sirius began an intense cross fire against their enemies.

As they left they set fire to her; Sirius exploded at about eleven o'clock, with her hull then briefly drifting off the reef before sinking.

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