USS Vixen was a schooner in the United States Navy during the First Barbary War.

[3] In a letter dated 7 June Lieutenant John Smith was ordered to take over supervision of construction.

Designed especially for operations in the shoal waters off the coast of Tripoli, Vixen joined Commodore Edward Preble's squadron for duty in the First Barbary War (1801–1805) immediately upon her commissioning.

[6] Commodore Preble dispatched Vixen and the frigate Philadelphia in October to establish a blockade of Tripoli.

[7] However, Vixen soon departed in search of two Tripolitan warships and was not present when Philadelphia grounded and was captured on September 30th.

Instead, she carried the dispatches announcing the loss of the frigate and the imprisonment of Captain William Bainbridge, his officers, and crew back to Gibraltar in December.Retribution for this latest action by the Tripoli pirates came swiftly and dramatically.

Lt. Stephen Decatur, Jr., boarded and destroyed Philadelphia where she lay in Tripoli harbor on 16 February 1804.

There was damage to her stern, boat davits, her boar was lost and main boom broken.

Vixen participated in all these actions, and performed tactical service by helping to coordinate the movements of the various American vessels.

While in Malta in 16 October 1804, she was rerigged as a brig,[9][10] ostensibly to improve her sailing qualities, and was with the squadron, now under Commodore John Rodgers, in actions before Tunis in August 1805.

She left the yard one year later and subsequently operated along the Atlantic coast under Lieutenants James Lawrence and Charles Ludlow.

Commander Henry Boys apologized to the Americans, reporting that he had been unable to make out her colors and that he thought she might be a French privateer that he was seeking.

[11] Vixen continued patrolling the Atlantic coast until the outbreak of the War of 1812, at which time she sailed along the southern coast under Master Commandant Christopher Gadsden, Jr., and, after his death on 28 August 1812, under Lt. George Washington Reed, youngest son of General Joseph Reed.

During one of her war cruises among the West Indies, Vixen encountered the 32-gun British frigate Southampton, under the command of Captain James Lucas Yeo.