SMS was a steam corvette built for the Prussian Navy in the 1860s. She was the second and final member of the , ordered as part of a naval expansion program to counter the Danish Navy over the disputed ownership of Schleswig and Holstein. was laid down in February 1862, was launched in October 1864, and was completed in September 1865. She had one sister ship, , and the vessels were wooden-hulled ships armed with a battery of sixteen guns.

went on two major overseas cruises during her career, the first to the Mediterranean Sea in 1867–1868 during the Cretan Revolt against Ottoman rule. The second, lengthier voyage lasted from 1868 to 1871, and centered on operations in East Asia. There, she protected individuals from the German states in Japan during the final stage of the Boshin War, helped to suppress Chinese pirates, and visited numerous ports to show the flag. After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, was trapped in Yokohama, Japan by a French squadron blockading the port; as a result, she saw no action during the conflict.

After returning to unified Germany in 1872, was converted into a training ship, a role she filled for the next eight years. During this period, she went on a number of training cruises, both in the Baltic Sea and longer voyages to North, Central, and South America, as well as the Mediterranean. She helped to monitor tensions in the Balkans in the mid-1870s and helped to secure restitution for the murder of a German diplomat in Salonika. Worn out by 1880 and in need of a thorough overhaul, the navy instead decided to remove the ship from service, using her as a hulk until 1891, when she was sold for scrap.

Design

The two -class corvettes were ordered in the early 1860s as part of a program to strengthen the Prussian Navy when the likelihood of a conflict with Denmark over the Schleswig–Holstein question increased. The design for the class was completed in 1861 and work began on both ships the next year.

was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced at full load. The ship's crew consisted of 14 officers and 176 enlisted men. She was powered by a single marine steam engine that drove a 2-bladed screw propeller, with steam provided by four coal-fired fire-tube boilers, which gave her a top speed of at . She had a cruising radius of at a speed of . was equipped with a full ship rig to supplement her steam engine.

was armed with a battery of ten 36-pounder guns and six 12-pounder guns, all on the broadside. In 1869, these guns were replaced with seventeen, and later nineteen, 23-caliber guns. Later in her career, these were reduced to nine guns.

Service history was ordered in 1861, and her name was assigned by an order from the Prussian Navy Department on 23 July 1861, before work began on the vessel. Her keel was laid down on 6 February 1862 at the (Royal Shipyard) in Danzig, but work proceeded slowly owing to budgetary disputes between the (State Diet) and the Prussian Minister of War, Albrecht von Roon, who was also the naval minister. In addition, the navy wanted to use the experience gained in building her sister ship during the construction of . These issues were pushed aside by the outbreak of the Second Schleswig War against Denmark in early 1864, since new warships were needed to counter the significantly stronger Danish fleet. On 20 October, was launched, though the war ended ten days later. Fitting-out work then commenced, and the ship was ready to begin sea trials on 15 September 1865, which were conducted between Danzig and Swinemünde and lasted to the end of the month.

First overseas deployment The navy planned to send on an expedition to the North Pole, but it abandoned the plan, and remained out of service through 1866, including during the Austro-Prussian War. On 10 April 1867, the ship was finally commissioned; this was followed by more sea trials from 15 to 22 May, after which she conducted training exercises that lasted until 25 August. These exercises were at times in company with the frigate . After the outbreak of the Cretan Revolt in 1866, what was now the North German Federal Navy decided to send a squadron to the Mediterranean Sea to protect German interests on the island and in the surrounding area. , , and the gunboat were assigned to the unit. Before they left, was fitted with an experimental oven to allow her crew to bake fresh bread during the deployment in the interest of improving the crew's rations, rather than relying entirely on hardtack. The three ships left Kiel on 14 September 1867; the first leg of the trip, to Portsmouth, Britain, saw the ships carry a crew for the new ironclad , which had just been completed there. After depositing the crew to take back to Germany, , , and continued on to the Mediterranean.

In late October, and arrived off Crete to participate in an international squadron to protect the local Greek civilians from the occupying Ottoman Army, but the necessity for their presence soon ended. The North German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, initiated a conference between the Great Powers in Paris, France to avoid a wider war over the island. On 8 December, the three German ships met in Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire, and in early January 1868, the squadron commander, (KzS—Captain at Sea) Eduard Heldt went to visit the Ottoman government in Constantinople. This required passage through the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara, which were closed to large foreign warships, so Heldt had to transfer to for the voyage. From 12 to 24 January, began a tour of the Aegean Sea. The Mediterranean squadron was recalled on 16 February owing to increased tensions with France. initially stopped in Alexandria in Egypt before making the voyage home. She arrived back in Kiel in mid-April, and was scheduled to be equipped immediately for a deployment to East Asia, but the planned assignment was cancelled and she was instead decommissioned in Kiel on 15 May.

Second overseas deployment was recommissioned on 20 August and was transferred to Danzig, though on 25 September she moved back to Kiel. She was sent to assist the Russian frigate , which had run aground off Aarhus, but she was recalled before arriving when it became clear that the ship was beyond salvaging. On 20 October, she left Germany for an extended cruise abroad. She reached Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 15 December, where she was visited by Emperor Pedro II. continued the voyage on 3 January 1869, crossing the Indian Ocean and stopping at the island of Île Saint-Paul on 14 February. She sailed on to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, where she met the Bremen-flagged full-rigged ship , which had caught fire and burned badly. towed to Singapore, where the crew could return home.

On s arrival in Singapore, the East Asia Station, which the Navy Department had ordered established in 1867, could finally be created. initially served as the flagship of the squadron until her long-time consort arrived on 12 February 1870 to take over that function. In the meantime, was first tasked with searching for an appropriate location for a coaling station that could be used to support the German squadron; she examined Blair's Harbour on the Malay Peninsula, the Ryukyu Islands, and the Gotō Islands. After returning to Singapore, received news from the German ambassador to Japan, Max von Brandt, that the Japanese had begun persecuting Europeans in the country, and that her presence was necessary to protect them. She left Singapore on 16 May 1869 and stopped briefly in Hong Kong, where she was present for the official renaming of the Prussian embassy there to the North German embassy, before continuing to Japan. She reached Hakodate in early June, where her crew observed the destruction of the former Prussian corvette , which had been sold to the Tokugawa Shogunate and renamed .

sailed to Yokohama and then to Edo, where on 19 August she joined an international fleet of warships organized to pressure the Japanese Meiji government, then in the closing days of the Boshin War, to suppress the attacks on Europeans in the country. , being one of the shallower-draft vessels of the fleet, anchored close to shore, near the Japanese ironclad . Negotiations were successfully completed the next day, and sailed back to Yokohama. She was caught in a typhoon while en route and was badly damaged when a barque was driven into her by the strong winds. During the storm, the United States sloop was also seriously damaged, and came to her aid; her crew were thanked by President Ulysses S. Grant for their actions. was under repair in Yokohama until late October.

Pirate attacks in Chinese waters drew there after repairs were completed; at the request of the German ambassador in Beijing, she operated with British warships to track down pirates attacking European merchant ships. A German barque, , that was carrying a load of tea to New York had been attacked off Macao by a pirate junk. went there on 15 November to track down the pirates; on reaching , the Germans discovered that her captain had been injured and a sailor had been killed, but most of her cargo remained, as the pirates had been scared off by the approach of another vessel. went back to Macao, and began the search, along with one Portuguese, one United States, and two Chinese gunboats. The Portuguese gunboat captured the junk, sank it, and carried the crew to Guangzhou, where they were tried and executed for their crime. During the search, found and arrested another group of pirates who had recently attacked a British barque. s commander sent a report back to Berlin requesting the permanent stationing of gunboats in the region to help combat the pirates, and as a result, was dispatched to join his ship.

remained in Hong Kong through the end of January 1870, at which point she went to Bangkok, Siam, where she participated in ceremonies commemorating the death of the King of Siam, Mongkut. She also helped mediate a dispute over the sinking of a German merchant vessel in the Mekong River. On 10 April, left Bangkok and stopped in Saigon on the way back to Hong Kong; the ship had suffered a serious accident with her engine, forcing her to stop in the port for repairs. A French merchant vessel carried a badly injured crewman from back to Toulon, France. The engine could not be repaired in Saigon, so departed for Yokohama, traveling mostly by sail. She arrived there on 23 July, where she met . While there, celebrated "Napoleon Day", celebrating the anniversary of Napoleon's birth on 15 August, with a French ironclad in the port, neither vessel being aware that the Franco-Prussian War had broken out a month before. Shortly thereafter, a United States steamship arrived with news of the state of war, and the French East Asia Squadron arrived to blockade the German ship in port. Although it prevented from taking offensive measures against French shipping, the blockade tied down the French squadron and allowed German vessels to largely escape being attacked.

During this time the ship's engine was repaired, and she remained in the port until after the war ended, departing Yokohama on in mid-April 1871 after having received the order to return to the now-unified Germany on the second of the month. She steamed south, crossed the Indian Ocean, and then after rounding South Africa, turned north through the Atlantic and finally arrived in Kiel on 26 August. There, she received a thorough inspection before being decommissioned on 10 October; since the (Imperial Shipyard) in Kiel was not yet ready to repair the ship, she was moved to Danzig in August 1872, where she underwent a thorough overhaul and was converted for use as a training ship for (apprentice seamen).

Later career