The Leopoldus Primus, also called Leopold I, was the first convoy ship commissioned to protect the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

She was designed for use against piracy on the trade routes to Spain, Portugal, and West Africa and to accompany whalers to Greenland.

Named in honor of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, she was put into service in 1668 and scrapped in 1705 after 34 major missions.

The Hamburg sculptor Christian Precht, also known for his work in churches, was hired to create a representation of Leopold I for the stern.

The naming of such an important vessel after a strict Catholic Emperor in distant Vienna for a city like Hamburg, Lutheran and uninterested in imperial affairs, was quite unusual.

A handwritten contemporary poem suggests that the ship was named for the association of Leopold with military success, perhaps against the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Saint Gotthard.

There are few records describing the size and appearance of Leopoldus Primus or her sister ship, Wapen von Hamburg.

Wolfgang Quinger, in Wappen von Hamburg I (1980), suggests that the pair may have been more or less replicas of the Dutch ship Aemilia.

Leopoldus Primus had a crew, depending on length and purpose of travel, from around 150 to 250 men, of which about 15 to 20 were officers, including the captain and his lieutenant as well as ministers and the commander of the soldiers.

Voluntary recruits rather than being pressed into service, they were expected to equip themselves, and more died from diseases caused by unclean conditions on the ship than from battle, at as high a rate as four to one.