Sidewheel steamer Adelaide was built in 1854 at Greenpoint, Long Island, New York, by the firm of Lupton and McDermott for Cornelius Vanderbilt who intended to send her round Cape Horn for service in the rivers and shallow coastal waters of California during the Gold Rush.

However, changing business conditions caused this plan to be cancelled; and the ship was sold while she was still under construction to the Calais, Maine, Steamboat Company for which she operated as a passenger packet between Boston, Massachusetts, and New Brunswick, Canada.

On 7 May 1861, after having plied the waters of the Chesapeake Bay on this run for over two years, the steamer arrived at Old Point Comfort, Virginia, her last stop on her route south before Norfolk.

She performed her most important naval service late in the summer of 1861 when she carried Union troops to Hatteras Inlet for combined operations against the forts guarding the entrance to the North Carolina sounds.

Rebuilt by William Skinner and Sons in 1871, the ship was turned over to Harlan and Hollingsworth in 1879 in partial payment for that firm's construction of the new steamer Virginia.