The second USS Boston was a 24-gun frigate, launched 3 June 1776 by Stephen and Ralph Cross, Newburyport, Massachusetts, and completed the following year.

On 21 May 1777, Boston sailed in company with USS Hancock and the Massachusetts privateer American Tartar for a cruise in the North Atlantic.

The British captured Hancock and Fox, but Boston escaped to the Sheepscot River on the Maine coast.

In June 1781 Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot sent Charlestown and several other vessels to attempt to block some French reinforcements from entering Boston.

[5] On 7 July, the squadron that Arbuthnot sent to Boston recaptured the British sloop-of-war HMS Atalanta, which the American frigate USS Alliance had captured on 27 May.

[8] The convoy was off the harbor of Spanish River, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (present-day Sydney, Nova Scotia), or Île Royale, when it came under attack from two French frigates Astrée, commanded by La Pérouse, and Hermione, commanded by Latouche Tréville, resulting in the naval battle of Louisbourg.

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