Whilst the City of Rome is generally regarded as the most beautiful steamship ever built for the North Atlantic passenger trade, she was equally one of the greatest disappointments, both to the Barrow Company who built her as well as to her original owners. Registered at 8,400 tons and measuring 560 feet in length, her three raked funnels and four masts gave her a particularly striking silhouette when compared with all her contemporaries on the New York run. Designed to be the record-breaking flagship for the prestigious Inman Line, she was completed in 1881 and entered service the same year. From the outset however she proved highly disappointing and never achieved her intended speed of 18 knots. Luxuriously appointed and one of the first liners to be lit throughout by electricity, she was rejected by Inman's after six round trips and they refused to pay for her. Despite lengthy litigation, Barrow's were forced to take her back and, once modified, she was leased by them to the Anchor Line. By now capable of the elusive 18 knots cruising speed, she could still have salvaged her reputation but for the fact that the Anchor Line could not afford a comparable consort for her without which it was impossible to maintain a regular, and thus profitable, service to New York. Paired with various unsuitable running mates when operating out of Liverpool, she was eventually transferred to the Glasgow-New York route in 1891 making her best crossing of 7 days 3 hours the following June. In 1890 she grounded on the Fastnet Rock and later survived a collision with an iceberg, but throughout the 1890's, apart from a brief charter to the Spanish government to bring their troops home from the West Indies in 1892, she continued her Atlantic crossing with dogged reliability. Requisitioned as a troopship for the Boer War in 1900, she was released in 1902 and subsequently sold for breaking up. Graceful though troublesome to the end, she completed her somewhat chequered life with typical flourish by sinking at her scrapping berth.