Amazon is a 102-foot (31 m) long screw schooner and former steam yacht built in 1885 at the private Arrow Yard of Tankerville Chamberlayne in Southampton.

[4] Carvel planked in teak and pitch pine on oak frames, with alternate wrought iron strap floor reinforcement, bronze fastenings, lead keel and copper sheathing, the Amazon's hull is still largely original.

[1] Her builder and first owner, Tankerville Chamberlayne, an English gentleman, personally supervised her construction by his own Arrow Yard at Northam on the River Itchen.

This small private facility was established by the Chamberlayne family for the maintenance of the famous cutter Arrow, which was adapted continuously and thereby kept racing competitively into the 1890s.

Having been prepared appropriately for the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Royal Fleet Review in 1897 (at which Turbinia made her debut), she was shortly after sold to a prominent French yachtsman and was based at Saint Malo as Armoricain until 1900, when she returned to British ownership.

[1] The actor Arthur Lowe bought her as a houseboat in 1968 and, encouraged by his surveyor's positive report, made her ready for sea again in 1971;[5] at first a private yacht she then pursued a successful charter business in the 1980s, before migrating to northern Scotland in 1990.