Tellus was a steam cargo ship built in 1911 by the William Doxford & Sons of Pallion for the Wabanas Dampskibskompani, a subsidiary of Nova Scotia Steel & Coal Company and managed by Wilhelm Wilhelmsen.

The vessel was launched on 31 January 1911 (yard number 417),[4] and the sea trials were held on 8 March 1911 with the ship being able to reach speed of 12.0 knots (13.8 mph; 22.2 km/h).

On 10 March 1911 Tellus departed from Newcastle for Narvik where the ship was scheduled to take a load of iron ore for delivery to Philadelphia.

[1] After completion Tellus loaded 11,000 tons of Swedish iron ore from the Kiruna-Luossavaara mines in Narvik and departed for her maiden journey on 18 March 1911 to Philadelphia,[7] arriving there on 6 April.

[10] Tellus continued serving the Wabana-Rotterdam route through the end of 1913 during the open navigation period around Newfoundland, usually April through November.

[21] After the start of World War I Tellus could no longer be involved in her ore trade, as the main consumer of her cargo was Germany.

She had to stop at Gibraltar for a British inspection where the ship was ordered to unload all copper before being allowed to proceed to Genoa on 23 December.

Tellus departed New York for Vladivostok on 21 August 1915 with 11,500 tons of general cargo (most of it were military supplies for Russia), and passed through the Panama Canal on 2 September.

After replenishing her coal bunkers, the ship left Nemuro early on 17 November heading to Muroran, but ran aground in stormy weather on Kaigara-jima sustaining significant damage to her bottom.

Most of her cargo was unloaded and saved using lighters but due to the ship being stranded in isolated position she was not refloated until 22 January 1916 and towed to Hanasaki for repairs.

The ship was renamed Elizabeth IV and after finishing repairs and transfer was chartered to transport sugar from East India to Europe.

At around 16:00 the lifeboats were sighted by Greek steamer Petritzis, who took the crew on board and safely landed them at Savona in the morning of 10 September.