 "Hydra" was recommissioned on 9 June 1858, under Commander Richard Vesey Hamilton, and served on the North America and West Indies Station until 1862.Commander Arthur Lukis Mansell was appointed to command her in January 1865 and she was once again employed as a surveying ship, first in the Ionian Sea, with the resulting Admiralty chart "West Coast of Morea to the Island of Zante" being published in 1867.Captain took command in 1866 for her most notable task — a deep-sea cruise in 1867-1868 in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic Ocean, and a sounding from Aden to Bombay.