The vessel "Albatros" traded along the Southern African coast, sailing to Mauritius on one occasion, taking two months and ten days for the round trip. In March 1874, en route from Knysna to Cape Town and under captain Knud Thomasen, she struck a reef off Cape Agulhas and went down. The passengers and crew were stranded for three days on Dyer Island before being rescued by local fishermen and then travelling by wagon to Caledon. The Thesens' next vessel was the 191-ton brig "Ambulant" which, in 1883, was the first ship to take on cargo at the new Government Wharf off Thesen's Island, the cargo consisting of 3 000 railway sleepers to Cape Town. Competition from the Castle and Union Lines forced Thesen's to shut down this route and "Ambulant" was sold off in 1884. This was followed in 1895 by the 427-ton mail packet "Agnar", a steamship nicknamed 'Agony' by the local school children she regularly carried to boarding schools in Cape Town. She stayed in service for some 40 years, as troop carrier for the British colonial government in the Boer War (1899–1902) and for the German government in the Herero Wars in German South-West Africa (1904–1907). She was taken over by a business in Madagascar in 1934 and was lost in a cyclone off Mauritius in 1938. The 706-ton "Ingerid" was taken into service in 1901 and the 600-ton "Karatara" in 1913. The 1019-ton "Outeniqua" joined the fleet in 1915, the 139-ton "Clara" converted from a sand barge and suction dredger and the 216-ton "Nautilus" in 1917.