Mircea is a three-masted barque, built in 1938 in Hamburg by the Blohm & Voss shipyard as a training vessel for the Romanian Navy. Her design is based on the successful plans of Gorch Fock; the last of a series of four sister ships. The ship is named after the Wallachian Voivode, Mircea the Elder. After World War II she was temporarily taken over by the USSR, but later returned to Romania. In 1966, she was overhauled by Blohm & Voss.

The Romanian Naval Forces is the principal naval branch of the Romanian Armed Forces and operates in the Black Sea and on the Danube. It traces its history back to 1860.