"The Tantive 4 is the ship in the first scene of Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope. It's a regular Corellian Corvette that Leia owns, she uses it for dipolmatic missions in the republic, as well as missions to aid the Rebel Alliance to which she is part of. When the Imperials capture her ship and crew she has plans for the Imperial Death Star onboard. She transfers these plans to the astromech droid R2-D2 and sends him in an escape pod to the surface of the planet Tatooine. The Tantive 4 is then allegedy destroyed by the Imperials to coverup their seize of an Ambassador's ship, and declare the ordeal as an accident, "ship was caught in an asteroid storm and all aboard were killed." This is an excerpt from princessleia.com
