Formerly the New York pilot boat New Jersey, the ship was purchased by the Navy in 3 August 1838 and renamed USS Sea Gull.

The ships left Norfolk on August 18, 1838, for the tip of South America, where they would await the slower Relief and then continue to Antarctica and the Pacific Islands.

On March 5, the wind increased to a whole gale and the commander of the expedition — Lt. Charles Wilkes — ordered the ships about and headed north.

Wilkes ordered Johnson to proceed back to Orange Bay after stopping at Deception Island to attempt to retrieve a self-reading thermometer left there by an earlier British expedition.

On April 17, 1839, Wilkes left Orange Bay in Vincennes with Porpoise for Valparaíso, Chile and ordered the schooners Flying Fish and Sea Gull to wait ten days for the supply ship Relief.

The Sea Gull, under the command of passed midshipman James Reid, was last seen waiting out a gale in the lee of Staten Island off Cape Horn at Midnight on 28 April.