She was fitted with a 160 hp auxiliary engine which gave her a top speed of 6 knots.

[1][2] Mircea entered service in 1882 and became the second warship of the Romanian Black Sea fleet, after the gunboat Grivița, commissioned in 1880.

The two vessels, together with the protected cruiser Elisabeta and the three Smeul-class torpedo boats, officially formed the Romanian Black Sea Fleet in 1890.

[3] She served as a training ship during the First World War,[4] although she was also rated as a composite gunboat.

[5] She survived the war and was replaced in 1939 as the Romanian Navy's training ship by a modern, German-built yet unarmed three-masted bark with the same name, which is still in service to this day.