The four-master W.J. Pirrie under reduced sail with a lighthouse off her starboard bow

The iron full-rigger W.J. Pirrie was built for Mr. Samuel Lawther by Harland & Wolff at Belfast and launched in May 1883. Registered at 2,576 tons gross (2,516 net), she measured 308 feet in length with a 43 foot beam. Sistership to Lawther's Lord Wolseley, both were intended for the California grain trade and the Pirrie proved "a steady performer" according to the maritime historian Basil Lubbock. Also employed in the Calcutta trade, two of her fastest passages were Liverpool to Calcutta in 99 days in 1889 and Calcutta to Prawle Point in 97 days in 1897. Although she disappears from Lloyd's Registers of Shipping soon after 1900, Lubbock also notes that she survived the Great War but was abandoned at sea in November 1920.