It was completed on 22 June 1974 under its first recorded name Essberger Pilot with an original port of registry at Limassol, Cyprus.

Over the following years, the ship would change names several times, including Solvent Explorer, Tom Lima, and Hordafor Pilot.

[5] On 25 February 2022, the Millennial Spirit was carrying 600 tons of diesel fuel while transiting through the Black Sea.

However, these reports turned out to be false and Moldova's naval agency confirmed that the Millennial Spirit was Moldovan.

Because of this, The Drive has suggested that[10] when the Ukrainian authorities reported days earlier on 7 March that the Russian patrol boat Vasily Bykov had been damaged by a missile attack by Ukraine,[11] they confused it with the Millennial Spirit, as new pictures and footage of the ship intact in Sevastopol appeared on 16 March.