The City of Adelaide was built by William Pile, Hay and Company of Sunderland in 1864. From 1864 to 1886, City of Adelaide was managed by Messrs Devitt and Moore and she ran a fast liner service between London, Plymouth and Adelaide, making approximately one round the world voyage every year. The City of Adelaide was purpose built to serve the passenger trade and for nearly a quarter of a century from 1864 played an important role in the development of the colony of South Australia. She carried all classes of passengers from the rich to the poor, from people 'of substance', to government assisted emigrants. Her first class cabins were considered to be the finest of the sailing ship era.

In 1887, all shares in the vessel were sold to a Dover coal merchant, Charles Havelock Mowll and for a short period she worked in the collier trade from the Tyne to the Thames. In the following year she was sold to Belfast based timber merchants, Daniel and Thomas Stewart Dixon. From then until 1893 she worked in the North Atlantic bulk timber trade bringing timber into Belfast and Dublin. In 1893, whilst in Bowling on the Clyde, she was acquired by the Corporation of the City of Southampton. She was dismasted and converted to become a hospital isolation ship with the nurses’ quarters in the first class cabins and the ward on the ‘tween deck. Large “windows” were cut into the ‘tween deck to bring light into the ward.