[1] The ship was built by the Thames Graving Dock Company in London in 1866.

She was the first screw steamer in the Great Eastern Railway Company fleet.

On 28 December 1868, she came to the rescue of the steamship Berussia which had broken her main shaft on a voyage from New York to Hamburg.

An attempt to tow the Berussia failed and the Great Yarmouth took some of the passengers and transferred them to Portland.

[3] She was sold to in 1873 to Thomas Gage Beatley and later ended up in the ownership of Mr Joseph Reay of Newcastle.