The first  four-masted steel ship built  by Harland & Wolff. She was rigged with double top and top gallant sails.

 

It was widely speculated in the press at the time that while sailing from Caleta Buena, Chile, to Hamburg, she collided off the coast of Brazil with the Prince Oscar, sinking with all hands on 12th July 1895. But it was probably not what happened. An enquiry was held, and in the end, Lloyd's Register of Shipping listed no known cause for the ship's disappearance. A newspaper snippet printed after the Lord Downshire was posted missing suggested that the Prince Oscar was struck by another vessel altogether, which was due off the coast of Brazil at the very time of the Prince Oscar sinking. The Lord Downshire, by contrast, would normally have been long back in port by that time, unless she encountered trouble off Cape Horn. She was carrying a cargo of nitrate.