The full-rigged ship Cambrian was originally named the James Edwards when she was launched from Walter Brown's Portland Yard at St. John, New Brunswick (Canada) in June 1865. Built for Joseph Pritchard of St. John, she was registered at 1,090 and measured 179 1/2 feet in length with a 37 foot beam. From her home port of St. John she regularly voyaged to Liverpool and London but changed her name to Cambrian in 1874 at which time her owner is noted as B.A. Pritchard of Bootle, Lancashire, probably a relative of the aforementioned Joseph who merely acted as her Agent in the U.K. Last recorded in Captain Beard's Lists of Sailing Ships, she is stated there to have been abandoned whilst on passage to Falmouth from Pavellon de Pica on 24 May 1878.