On 20 August 1883 she arrived in Suva, Fiji carrying 494 Indian indentured labourers from Calcutta. She had previously carried indentured labourers to the West Indies.[2]
On 6 May 1885, Bayard hit an iceberg, 55miles South of Cape Race while on a voyage from Marseilles to St. Pierre. The ship lost her stern, bowsprit, jib-boom, foremast, topgallantmast and yard, but reached her destination on 23 May, leaking badly.[3]
She was later used as a coaling ship for the whaling station in South Georgia. Bayard lost her mooring at the coaling pier in Ocean Harbour during a severe gale on 6 June 1911 and ran aground on the rocks on the southern side of the bay, where the wreck still remains, as a breeding site for blue-eyed shags.[4]