The ivon screw yacht Ulva was designed and built for Mr. W.O. Gilchrist by Scott's of Greenock in 1879. Registered at 173 tons, she was 170½ feet in length and had a 21 foot beam. Her 70 hp. engines were from the Greenock Foundry Co. and she was rated A1 by Lloyd's when first surveyed in Southampton. For most of her life her home port was London, but by 1914 she was lying in Antwerp. Her disappearance from Lloyd's Registers after 1914 suggests she may have been sunk or captured by the German forces which attacked and then occupied that city in the early stages of the Great War.