She made two trips for the British East India Company (EIC), and was homeward bound from the second of these when the French privateer Napoleon captured her off the Cape of Good Hope.

Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Bar - about 20 miles before Whampoa — on 3 January 1803, reached St Helena on 14 April, and arrived at The Downs on 19 June.

[9] As Hercules was returning to England from Bombay in 1805, the French privateer Napoleon captured her off Cape Agulhas and sent her into Port Louis.[a].

In November 1805, Napoleon brought the prisoners from Hercules and from the whaler Diamond into the Cape Colony, then in Dutch hands.

[b] There Alex Tennant, resident in the Cape, arranged at his own expense, for the prisoners to be sent to St Helena, where they arrived in January 1806.