[9] On 6 January 1800, Essex, under the command of Captain Preble, departed Newport, Rhode Island, in company with USS Congress to escort a convoy of merchant ships to Batavia, Dutch East Indies.

[12] Due to poor quality of masts and rigging, similar to those problems suffered by USS Congress, she spent a week effecting repairs.

[13] On 24 March a heavy gale hit Cape Town capsizing and sinking her launch, the crew was saved with difficulty by HMS Diomede's barge.

[15] She was the first US man-of-war to double the Cape of Good Hope, both in March and in August 1800 prior to successfully completing her convoy mission in November.

[21] St. Helena was the designated rendezvous point for her convoy of returning merchant ships if they got scattered in storms rounding Cape Horn, which they had.

Preble on 29 May, 1801,[26] whereon she sailed for the Mediterranean with the squadron of Commodore Richard Dale clearing the Cape on 2 June.

[27] Dispatched to protect American trade and seamen against depredations by the Barbary pirates, the squadron arrived at Gibraltar on 1 July 1801.

Returning to the Washington Navy Yard in July, she was placed in ordinary until February 1809, when she was recommissioned for sporadic use in patrolling American waters and a single cruise to Europe.

When war was declared against Britain on 18 June 1812, Essex, commanded by Captain David Porter, made a successful cruise to the southward.

The youngest member of the Essex crew was 10-year-old midshipman David Glasgow Farragut, who would become the first admiral of the US Navy.

Although her crew suffered greatly from a shortage of provisions and heavy gales while rounding Cape Horn, she anchored safely at Valparaíso, Chile, on 14 March, having seized the whaling schooner Elizabeth, and the Peruvian man-of-war Nereyda along the way.

While they were there, their crews became involved in a local dispute that resulted in the Nuku Hiva Campaign, which temporarily established the United States' first colony and naval base in the Pacific Ocean.

Upon rounding the point, Essex lost her main top-mast to foul weather and was brought to action just north of Valparaíso.

Fires twice erupted aboard Essex, at which point about fifty men abandoned the ship and swam for shore, only half of them landing; the British saved sixteen.

[48] Herman Melville wrote about Essex in "Sketch Fifth" in The Encantadas, focusing on an incident off the Galápagos Islands with an elusive British ship.

The 1950 American film Tripoli is a fictionalized account of the Battle of Derne, and USS Essex is shown in it.

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