Built for the Liverpool-based British Shipowners' Company by Richard, Duck & Co. of Stockton in 1876, the iron windjammer Annesley was launched as the British Enterprise. A very fast ship and a good sea boat, she was registered at 1,640 tons and measured 246 feet in length with a 40 foot beam. Her early years under the "British" houseflag were profitable if uneventful until, in 1883, the first of several disasters to overtake her occured when she was rammed and sunk at her moorings at Shields by the S.S. Warksworth. Her owners claimed on their insurance and her underwriters sold her to Johnson, Sproule & Co. of Liverpool who, after raising her, refitted her and sent her back to sea with the new name of Annesley. Thereafter she was plagued by constant mishaps and, according to a writer in Sea Breezes, crew's lives were lost through drowning or accident on all but three of her voyages during the last thirteen years of her existence.

After the 1883 sinking, her next serious accident was to capsize in Rotterdam where, having toppled right over onto the dock, she crushed all her lower yards and suffered extensive damage. Once again she was saved, eventually foundering at the end of her most disasterous voyage in 1910. Homeward bound in October that year, she ran into heavy seas whilst rounding Cape Horn and her captain was lost overboard. Tragic though that was, it was greatly worsened by the fact that he had only recently taken command from her original captain who had died at sea earlier in the passage. Despite this double tragedy, Annesley sailed on but ran onto the Tuskar Rocks, in the Irish Sea, where she sank shortly after her crew had got off safely.