Mircea

Built at the Blohm & Voss yard in Hamburg as a Romanian sail training ship to the plans of the Gorch Fock of 1933 and delivered in January 1939.

Her port of registry became Constanța on the Black Sea and her maiden voyage was in the Mediterranean; she was used to train naval and merchant cadets.

During the Second World War she made only short coastal trips with naval cadets; she came under the Russian flag for a time but was given back. From 1946 to 1965 she sailed the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and in 1965–66 was given a general overhaul at Hamburg to keep her class.

Afterwards she trained cadets no longer exclusively in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean but visited other parts of Europe, Africa and North America. In 1975 she took part in the Tall Ships Race at London and Amsterdam and in 1976 in the US bicentennial transatlantic race.

At the end of the 1990s she was laid up for economic reasons. After a general overhaul she visited American and Canadian Atlantic ports in 2004 and joined the Tall Ship Challenge 2004, calling at Charleston, Baltimore, Providence, New London, Halifax, Arichat and Sydney, and in 2005 the Tall Ships Races, visiting the Amsterdam and Bremerhaven festivals.

She is named after the Romanian prince Mircea the Elder (1383–1418), who freed his state from Turkish power and so established Romanian sea trade for a time.