The German tanker Helios at sea, 1898

Designed to carry cotton seed oil in bulk, the German tanker Helios was built for Deutsch-Amerika Petroleum Ges. by David J. Dunlop & Co. at Port Glasgow in 1894. Registered in Hamburg at 3,477 tons gross (3,109 under deck and 2,211 net), she measured 333½ feet in length with a 43 foot beam and was powered by one of her builder's own triple-expansion 3-cylinder 351nhp. engines. German-owned and operating out of Hamburg until 1914, she spent the Great War laid up as a German Navy depot ship at Emden. Handed over to the French government as war reparations in 1919 and thence to the Belgian government, apparently without any change of name, in 1921, she resumed commercial sailings later the same year under Italian colours and renamed Vampa. Remaining in Italian ownership, she had been renamed Clitunno by 1925 and was lost two years later when she was wrecked in the Black Sea on 30^th December 1927.