The ship took part in a number of campaigns during the first half of the American Revolutionary War before being destroyed by her own crew in 1779 to prevent her falling into the hands of the British after the failed Penobscot Expedition.

On 13 June, Deputy Governor Nicholas Cooke wrote the frigate's Captain James Wallace demanding restoration of several ships which Rose had detained.

The General Assembly appointed Abraham Whipple as commander of Katy, the larger ship, and made him commodore of the tiny fleet.

Whipple had won fame in burning the British armed schooner Gaspee in 1772, and he captured a tender to HMS Rose before sunset that same day.

Late in November, she sailed for Philadelphia carrying seamen enlisted by Commodore Esek Hopkins in New England for Continental service.

Hopkins deemed it unwise to cruise along the southern coast and led his little fleet to the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas, which they reached on 1 March and staged for a raid on New Providence.

About 1 a.m. on 6 April, USS Andrew Doria sighted HMS Glasgow, a 20-gun sloop carrying dispatches from Newport to Charleston, South Carolina.

Providence next escorted a convoy of colliers to Philadelphia, arriving 1 August, and Jones received his permanent commission as captain a week later.

Two days later, Providence captured the Bermudan brigantine Sea Nymph carrying sugar, rum, ginger, and oil and sent her to Philadelphia.

On the 6th, Providence caught the brigantine Favourite carrying sugar from Antigua to Liverpool, but HMS Galatea recaptured the prize before she could reach an American port.

There he recruited men to fill the vacancies created by manning his prizes, burned a British fishing schooner, sank a second, and captured a third besides a shallop which he used as a tender.

Providence had been troubled by leaks which developed during bad weather on the cruise, so she headed back for Rhode Island and arrived at Newport two days later.

She made two cruises on the coast under command of Captain John Peck Rathbun, and sailed from Georgetown, N.C. about mid-January 1778, again bound for New Providence in the Bahamas but this time alone.

On 27 January, she spiked the guns of the fort at Nassau, taking military stores including 1,600 pounds of powder and releasing 30 American prisoners.