Perseus was constructed as a sealer (seal hunting ship) by industrialist E. V. Mogučim at Onega, Russia on the White Sea in 1916.

In 1919 (political conditions and thus ownership having changed) it was towed to Archangel where on January 10 of 1922 the Council of Labor and Defense transferred it to PINRO (Russian: ПИНРО), the Nikolai M. Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography, which equipped it as a research vessel under supervision of the ship's master V. F. Gostev and the first director of the Institute, Ivan Illarionovich Mesjacev.

The work was done by shipbuilders and future famous scientists Lev Zenkevich, Vasily Shuleikin, Maria Klenova, and Nikolay Zubov (who later became a Rear Admiral), all of whom later participated in voyages on Perseus.

It took part in the international search for the airship Italia of Umberto Nobile's ill-fated second North Pole expedition.

The ship conducted hydrological, scientific, and commercial research, including programs of the second International Polar Year (1932-1933).