She became a letter of marque, slave ship in the triangular trade in enslaved people, and privateer cum whaler.

[3] Port au Prince first appeared in Lloyd's Register in 1794 with the notes that she was built in 1790, and was a French prize.

In any case, Henry Hayne received a letter of marque for Port au Prince on 5 March 1794.

She sailed from Liverpool on 16 October 1796, bound for the Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea islands to acquire and transport enslaved people.

He sailed Port au Prince on 28 March 1802, from London to West Central Africa and St Helena.

This led the government in the Danish West Indies to encourage the importation of captives prior to the ban taking effect.

Clearly, she was to serve as a privateer as she would be over-manned for a trader, slaver, or whaler, but would require extra men if she was successful in capturing enemy vessels that would need prize crews to bring them back to friendly ports.

The primary goal was to sail to the Pacific and capture treasure from the Spanish colonies on the west coast of South America, but if unsuccessful in that endeavour she should hunt whales.

One of the men aboard Port au Prince was William Mariner, who survived her loss and eventually wrote a detailed account of the journey, and of the Tongans amongst whom he lived after they captured him.

Circa end-August Port au Prince rescued ten men from the crew of Minerva.

[10] On 17 September Port au Prince was reported at Chinka (Peru), in company with the privateer Lucy, Captain Alexander Ferguson.

An inconclusive engagement followed in which Port au Prince lost a boy killed and had several men wounded, including Duck, before Astraea broke off the fight and returned to Paita.

Supposedly, Vaudreuil had stated that at the end of the combat on the first day his Spanish officers had urged him to strike, and that he would have done so, had the two British vessels boarded him.

[13] Lucy transferred some shot to Port au Prince, and resupplied herself from the supplies that the tender had been delivering to Astraea.

Port au Prince and Lucy divided equally the silver and dollars they had captured while operating together.

[c] On 30 March 1806 Port au Prince captured the Spanish brig Santa Isidora, Captain Josef Evernzega, master, about half-a-dozen miles off Acapulco.

He then put Mr. John Parker in charge of the brig and gave him ten crew men and provisions for four months with instructions to sail for Port Jackson.

Santa Anna was a "corbetta" under the command of Captain Francisco Puertas and carrying a cargo of pitch, tar, and cedar boards to Guayaquil.

Duck then put Mr. Charles Maclaren in command of Santa Anna and gave him a crew of 12 men plus a Spaniard to navigate her.

[18] She dropped anchor again for the last time on 29 November 1806 at an island called Lefooga in the Ha'apai Group, Kingdom of Tonga.

It was here that the Tongans reportedly massacred Captain Brown and 36 men of her 62-man crew,[19] and burnt the ship to the waterline after removing all her arms and whatever else they found useful.

[9] Then on 19 May 1809, Lloyd's List reported "The Port au Prince, of London, is taken at Tongataboo Island, in the South Pacific Ocean.

"[25] In August 2012, the wreck of Port au Prince was discovered off the coast of Foa Island (19°45′S 174°18′W / 19.750°S 174.300°W / -19.750; -174.300), in Tonga.

The Greenwich Maritime Museum and the Marine Archaeological Society both confirmed the age of the wreck after analysing copper sheathing found at the site.

The sheathing was only used between 1780 and 1850 to combat shipworm and marine weeds and so given the location of the wreck it is considered likely to be the remains of Port au Prince.