She was fitted with a 2-cylinder horizontal compound-expansion steam engine driving a single propeller, produced by Hawthorn Leslie.

She served in Sierra Leone in 1886[3] and became a tender to the training ship HMS Britannia at Dartmouth, Devon in 1896.

In 1916–17 Racer was rebuilt as a salvage vessel, being given the starboard machinery of Torpedo Boat 8, as well as two 17-ton derricks and submersible electric, steam centrifugal and compressed air pumps capable of pumping 3,000 tonnes (3 million litres) of water per hour.

[4] Each summer from 1920 to 1924 Racer was the diving support vessel to recover gold bars from HMS Laurentic, which had been sunk by German mines at the mouth of Lough Swilly in 1917.

Her derricks also raised many hundreds of tons of wreckage and sand from Laurentic that divers removed to reach the gold.