She served with the instructional flotilla after being launched. In February 1901 she went ashore near the Isle of Wight and was docked at Portsmouth Dockyard for overhaul. In 1904 she had her boilers modified to burn fuel oil as an experiment and comparative trials were carried out with her sister ship Peterel. Unfortunately the novel fuel system was not a success and billowed out large clouds of black smoke, leading to the abandonment of the idea for several years. She was scrapped in 1920.