HMS Spey was a sixth rate post ship, launched for the Royal Navy in 1814 towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

She received a double bottom to the line of flotation and was fitted for sea at Portsmouth between December 1814 and 7 February 1815.

It was expected that Captain Delano and his men would be tried on 26 October at Malta for piracy and possibly murder, William's mate being missing.

[5] Merchants in Malta requested assistance from the Royal Navy to chase William and apprehend the pirates.

Hobson put his men into two boats, one towing the other, which was covered, and they rowed up to William, boarded her, and arrested the crew.

The death sentence stipulated that William be painted black and towed out to the middle of the harbour of Valletta, and that the pirates be hanged on her.

[1] The "Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy" offered "Spey sloop, of 20 guns 463 tons", "lying at Chatham", for sale on 18 April 1822.

[1] On 27 February 1821 the representative of the New Granada Patriots in London, Luis López Méndez (the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Minister of Venezuela), agreed to a loan of £150,000 from the merchant James Mackintosh to cover the purchase of arms and equipment for 10,000 men, and three vessels.

The Colombians initially refused to accept the cargo, but the fall of Maracaibo to the Royalists on 7 September 1822 caused them to change their minds.

Boyacá and Bolivar reportedly freed a number of British and French ships that the Spanish Royalists had captured.

[12][13] A list of vessels making up a Colombian squadron cruising in the Gulf of Maracaibo in 1823 under the command of Rene Beluche included "Bolivar corvette", of 25 guns and 250 men.