In 1822, the U.S. Navy purchased Terrier at Baltimore, Maryland, for service in Commodore David Porter's (1780–1843) "Mosquito Fleet" in conjunction with the campaign to suppress pirates in the West Indies.

The ships reached St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies on 3 March 1823 and began patrolling the coast of Puerto Rico the next day.

Terrier and the seven other shallow-draft schooners acquired at Baltimore were ideally suited to the work of exploring the coastal shallows and shoal waters of the Caribbean where the pirates were based.

For the next two years, Terrier operated out of the depot Porter established at what is now Key West, Florida, and remained almost continually on station even during the two outbreaks of yellow fever – in the autumn of 1823 and the summer of 1824 – which sent the majority of the squadron's ships north to healthier latitudes.

In 1825, a slackening in seaborne piracy enabled the U.S. Navy to begin disposing of its special-purpose, shallow-draft ships on the West Indies station.