Ordered to replace the ageing Yugoslav training brig Vila Velebrita which was nearing the end of her useful life, Jadran was built by H.C. Stulcken Sohn at Hamburg in 1931-32. Steel hulled, she was designed as a three-masted topsail schooner even though her foremast rig was often said to be more reminiscent of that of a barquentine. Displacing 720 tons, she measured 157½feet in length (190½ feet including bowsprit) with a 29¾ foot beam and was equipped with an auxiliary 375hp. Linke-Hofmann-Buschwerke diesel engine capable of 8 knots in a calm. Of strikingly pleasing appearance, with a particulary finely formed bow, when all 8,000 square feet of her sails were set she was a memorable sight cruising the Adriatic when she entered service in the spring of 1932. Launched on 25th June 1931, she had accommodation for 150 cadets and their instructors and proved a highly successful training ship in her first decade. Captured by the Italians early in the Second World War, she was put to work under the name Marco Polo but subsequently returned to her owners after the War when she resumed both her original name and her training duties. Still in service, based at Bakar in 1987, her present situation, after the recent political upheavals in the former Yugoslavia, is unknown.