She spent her entire career with the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSP), mainly trading between England and the Caribbean.

After Orinoco, RMSP continued to order new ships equipped with both sail and steam propulsion, but they were all schooners.

She was also the last passenger ship to be built for RMSP with a largely flush deck, and little superstructure except for her bridge and some small deckhouses.

However, her design heavily influenced RMSP's next four large liners: Atrato (1888), Magdalena (1889), Thames (1889) and Clyde (1890).

[2] Orinoco's hull had ten watertight bulkheads,[3] and was designed to meet the standards for an armed merchant cruiser, for which the UK Government would pay a subvention.

On 21 November 1906 in Cherbourg Harbour she collided in fog with the Norddeutscher Lloyd transatlantic ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.

[7] A court of inquiry found Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse wholly responsible for the collision,[8] exonerating Orinoco and her Master, Captain Thomas Pearce.