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Dolphin was the fifteenth ship to bear the name and was built by the Middlesbrough firm of Dixon & Co. Ltd. The hull was planked with four inch mahogany covered by a two inch layer of teak, with the hull up to the water line, sheathed with heavy gauge copper. The main deck forward was ten inches thick and the ship was reinforced, both fore and aft, ready to take large calibre guns. She was a three-masted auxiliary barque, of 925 tons, fitted with a horizontal compound 'Back acting' steam engine. Her normal crew numbered 113.

The ship was commissioned at Sheerness in 1884 and under the command of Sydney Eardley-Wilmot was first attached to the Mediterranean Squadron. In 1885 a landing party from the ship's crew formed part of a naval brigade landed at Suakin in the Sudan.

In 1893, while under the command of Commander Horatio Nelson Dudding, she rescued the crew of the Brazilian Navy corvette Almirante Barroso, which was wrecked on the coast of the Red Sea near Ras Zeith on 21 May 1893 during an around-the-world cadet cruise.

In March 1885 she saw active service in Egypt, India and Australia, and fought at the battle of Tofrik. She saw further action in 1888 dealing with the remnants of the slave trade. In 1896 she was paid off at Sheerness.

By 1900 Dolphin had her engines were removed and she became a sea-going sail training ship, stationed at Portland taking boys on four month sail training cruises under the command of Lieutenant John Luce. She took part in the fleet review held at Spithead on 16 August 1902 for the coronation of King Edward VII.

In 1907, the ship was de-rigged and transferred to Portsmouth.

In April, 1911, Dolphin was the depot ship of the Portsmouth Submarine Flotilla, which then consisted of four A Class and one D Class submarines.

In mid-1913, Dolphin was servicing the Second Submarine Flotilla and was still doing so at the outset of the war.

In September 1916, she moved over to assist the Sixth Submarine Flotilla until the end of the war.

1924 she was decommissioned, giving her name to HMS Dolphin Submarine base at Gosport.

In 1925 Dolphin was bought by Lieutenant Commander J. M. Robertson, a Glasgow ship-owner and Sir Donald Pollock. Their plan was to convert the ship into a nautical museum. The vessel foundered under tow to the breakers in 1925, and was beached. There she lay for nearly a year before being taken to Leith dry dock for repairs, then Rosyth for refitting. In 1928, she was berthed at the West Old Dock, Leith.

In 1944, Dolphin changed careers again, to become a Merchant Navy Training Ship. Captain Salvesen, Mr Tom McPhail and Mr J. J. Robertson agreed with Leith Nautical College that she should become a a pre-training sea school for cadets and deck boys. It was then she became TS Dolphin, a merchant navy training ship, based at Leith Docks, Edinburgh, training 4,000 boys.

On July 4, 1977, when West Old Dock was scheduled to be filled in, she was towed away from the dock. She was beached later that day, on a spring tide, near to Bo'ness, to be burned out where she lay. It was ironic that her fate was decided in order to salvage her copper cladding that had kept her hull in good condition for almost a century.

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