Johanna is built in Rye, Sussex in the South of England in 1884 at the famous shipyard owned by James Collins Hoad, a shipyard well known for its beautiful ships. The first owner of Johanna, named Oxfordshire while belonging to England, was John William Haylock from Dulwich in Surrey. In October 1894, Georg Edv. James Moody, a great shipowner in Grimsby, bought Oxfordshire, but sold the ship again in December the same year to Jákup Dahl, a general merchant in Vágur. This was the first smack, which Jákup Dahl owned by himself.
