In 1936 King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson cruised parts of the Mediterranean on her, causing the scandal that led to the abdication crisis.
John Brown & Company built the yacht in 1930 in Clydebank, Glasgow, for the Scottish heiress, financier and horse breeder Lady Yule.
[8] She was furnished with six en-suite staterooms for guests, a gymnasium, a ladies' sitting room with sea views on three sides, and a library on the shade deck.
[9] Nahlin's original engines were a set of four Brown-Curtis stream turbines, two driving each propeller via single-reduction gearing.
[10] Nahlin was among the civilian ships that attended a Naval Review in 1935 to mark the Silver Jubilee of George V. Lady Yule invited Edward, Prince of Wales, aboard, and he "greatly admired" the yacht.
He chose Nahlin rather than the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert to "enable the avoidance of formality accorded to Royalty", because Wallis Simpson accompanied him.
UK newspapers declined to published the photos, but they became front-page news in the United States[4] and mainland Europe.
"[17][18] In 1937 King Carol II of Romania bought the yacht for £120,000 and renamed her Luceafărul, which is Romanian for "Evening Star".
Later she was renamed Răsăritul ("Sunrise"), and then Transilvania after the province of Transylvania, which had been transferred from Hungary to Romania after the First World War.
In September 1940 Carol II was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Michael, and that November Romania joined the Axis powers.
Libertatea was classified as cultural patrimony, but dubiously became property of a small Romanian private company called SC Regal SA Galaţi.
In a book published in 1997 they reported that at Galaţi "Ceaușescu's classic motor yacht dripped and rusted as the quay, beautiful, but neglected since the fall of his regime".
The Romanian Government issued a temporary permit for her to be taken out of Romania, supposedly to be restored by her builders GL Watson & Co, who still had her original plans.