She was laid down in the royal shipyard at Castellammare di Stabia on 1 April 1857 and launched in January 1860, entering service in the Real Marina of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies on 10 July 1860, under the name Borbone.

In August 1860 she reached Messina to assist other naval ships based there to hold up Garibaldi's advance, exchanging fire with the former Bourbon ship Veloce, which had been captured by the Garibaldian forces and renamed Tüköry after Lajos Tüköry, a Hungarian official who had been killed on 6 July 1860 at Palermo while taking part in the Expedition of the Thousand.

On 16 November 1872 she left Naples for a circumnavigation of the globe, stopping at Gibraltar and Rio de Janeiro, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1873 visiting Australia, the Fiji Islands and Japan.

After stopping there for around two months, she visited San Francisco and several ports in Mexico and Central and South America.

She was modified in 1883 and stationed in the Red Sea, taking part in the defence of Massawa before being disarmed and converted into a hospital ship in 1893, upon which she was renamed Saati to free up the name for the new armoured cruiser then being planned.