SMS Arcona was the lead ship of the of steam frigates built for the Prussian Navy in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The class comprised five ships, and were the first major steam-powered warships ordered for the Prussian Navy. The ships were ordered as part of a major construction program to strengthen the nascent Prussian fleet, under the direction of Prince Adalbert, and were intended to provide defense against the Royal Danish Navy. Arcona was armed with a battery of twenty-six guns, and was capable of steaming at a speed of . Arona was laid down in 1855, launched in 1858, and commissioned in 1859.
Arcona spent the first two years of her career leading the Eulenburg expedition as the squadron flagship; the mission took the ship to East Asia to support diplomatic efforts with the Kingdom of Siam, Qing China, and Tokugawa Japan. Arcona next saw service during the Second Schleswig War in 1864, once again serving as the flagship of a squadron led by Eduard von Jachmann, which briefly engaged the Danish Navy in the Battle of Jasmund in March. She saw no action during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, as the Austrian Navy remained in the Adriatic Sea during the short conflict. The ship passed into the service of the North German Federal Navy, which was created by the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation after their victory in the war with Austria.
The ship embarked on another major overseas cruise in 1869, this time to the eastern Mediterranean Sea for the opening ceremonies of the Suez Canal, followed by a cruise in the Caribbean Sea. She was still there when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in July 1870, and she soon stopped in the neutral Azores, where she remained safe from blockading French warships; she sailed to Portugal in November, where the French pursued and trapped her until the end of the war in January 1871. Arcona passed into the service of a third German navy, the (Imperial Navy) of the new German Empire. She made another major overseas voyage from 1873 to 1875, visiting East Asia and North and South America. The ship was used for limited training duties in the late 1870s and early 1880s, but her poor condition led to her being struck from the naval register in 1884. Briefly used as a target ship, she was broken up soon thereafter.
Design
In the immediate aftermath of the First Schleswig War against Denmark, Prince Adalbert began drawing up plans for the future of the Prussian Navy; he also secured the Jade Treaty that saw the port of Wilhelmshaven transferred to Prussia from the Duchy of Oldenburg, and which provided the Prussian fleet with an outlet on the North Sea. Adalbert called for a force of three screw frigates and six screw corvettes to protect Prussian maritime trade in the event of another war with Denmark. Design work was carried out between 1854 and 1855, and the first two ships were authorized in November 1855; a further pair was ordered in June 1860, and the final member of the class was ordered in February 1866.
Arcona was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced as designed and at full load. The ship had short forecastle and sterncastle decks. Her superstructure consisted primarily of a small deckhouse aft. She had a crew of 35 officers and 345 enlisted men.
Her propulsion system consisted of a single horizontal single-expansion steam engine driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by four coal-burning fire-tube boilers. Exhaust was vented through a single funnel located amidships. Arcona was rated to steam at a top speed of , but she significantly exceeded this speed, reaching from . The ship had a cruising radius of about at a speed of . To supplement the steam engine on long voyages abroad, she carried a full-ship rig with a total surface area of . The screw could be retracted while cruising under sail.
Arcona was armed with a battery of six 68-pounder guns and twenty 36-pounder guns. By 1870, she had been rearmed with a uniform battery of seventeen RK L/22 guns; later in her career, the number of these guns was reduced to eight.
Service history The keel for Arcona was laid down at the (Royal Dockyard) in Danzig in 1855; the specific date has not survived, but according to Dirk Nottelmann, the available evidence suggests work began the same day as work on her sister ship , on 5 December. It had been planned to complete work on the ship by early 1857, but a series of difficulties delayed completion. The original designer, Johan Gjerling, resigned from the project in June 1856, leaving the task of completing the ship to Carl Elbertzhagen, who replaced him as the navy's chief constructor. Elbertzhagen needed to make a series of alterations to the plans for the ship, including some significant details that had not been sketched by Gjerling at all, including the shape of the stern or the size of propeller to be fitted. By June 1857, the design work had been completed and the hull planking was finished. Though the ship was theoretically ready to be launched at this point, work on the ship's propulsion system had not been completed, and more importantly, the stretch of the Vistula in front of the shipyard had not been dredged deep enough to allow a ship the size of Arcona to pass through. This work had not been completed by December, when the annual freezing of the river precluded any thought of launching the ship until Spring on 1858.
Named for Cape Arcona on the island of Rügen, she was launched on 19 May 1858 but without a formal ceremony. This was in part due to lack of funding for an elaborate event; Prince Adalbert and fifty observers used a platform hastily constructed from scrap wood left over from building the ship. Initial tests of her propulsion system were done in late 1858. After completing fitting out work, she was commissioned into active service on 15 April 1859 to begin sea trials; Arcona was the first screw-propelled ship of the Prussian Navy. During her initial testing, which lasted until October that year, the ship had no formal commander, and was directed instead by a series officers assigned to the shipyard in Danzig. Final work in the shipyard proceeded as quickly as possible, as Arcona was scheduled to be sent to East Asia to protect Prussian economic interests there.
Eulenberg expedition
Beginning in the early decades of the 19th century, most other European powers had negotiated trade agreements with several of the East Asian states, principally China, Japan, and Siam, but Prussia had not (nor had any of the other German states). This left German merchants at a disadvantage, and Arcona was to take Friedrich Albrecht zu Eulenburg to negotiate trade treaties on behalf of the German (Customs Union). This mission became known as the Eulenburg expedition. Arcona was placed under the command of (KzS—Captain at Sea) Hinrik Sundewall, who was given the temporary rank of for the expedition, since he was to command a squadron that also included the sail frigate , the schooner , and the civilian vessel Elbe, which the navy purchased to support the mission. The very small Prussian Navy had great difficulty providing crews for the four vessels, and had to resort from transferring men from other ships, calling up conscripts, and hiring volunteers, all of whom required extensive training to prepare them for the lengthy voyage.
On 11 December 1859, Arcona departed Prussia and stopped first in Portsmouth, where repairs to storm damage had to be effected at the Royal Shipyard there. Arcona was ready to resume the voyage on 12 April 1860, and she met the rest of the squadron at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, later that year. From there, the ships sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean, and stopped in Anjer on the island of Java before eventually arriving at Singapore on 23 July. There, the ships embarked the diplomats and their staffs, as they had traveled there independently, either by rail or passenger ships. Because China was currently engaged in the Second Opium War against Britain and France, the Prussians decided to visit Japan first; the squadron arrived off Japan on 1 September, but a powerful typhoon sank Frauenlob and prevented the rest of the ships from anchoring at Tokyo for three days. After lengthy negotiations, which were exacerbated by Prussia's demand to represent not just itself but some thirty other German members of the , the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Prussia and Japan was finally concluded on 24 January 1861. The ships departed Tokyo four days later, stopping in Yokohama and Nagasaki on the way to China. Arcona frequently had to tow Thetis due to calm winds. By 1 March, the squadron had arrived in the mouth of the Yangtze river, and they anchored in Shanghai three days later. The following day, the crews of each ship swore allegiance to King Wilhelm I, who had replaced his deceased brother since the ships had left Prussia.
The political situation in China was still disturbed by the Second Opium War, which had ended late the last year. Eulenberg had expected to conduct negotiations in Shanghai, but this was not possible, and so Arcona and the rest of the squadron moved to Yantai on 23 April and then continued on to the mouth of the Hai River five days later; from there, Eulenberg and the other diplomats traveled over land to Tientsin. Over the coming months, Arcona and the other ships made routine trips from there to Yantai to maintain the mail connection with Germany. During this period, the ship also visited a number of ports in the area. On 2 September, the diplomats had concluded a trade treaty and thereafter returned to the Hai, where they boarded the ships on 13 September. Eulenberg had hoped to secure a colony for Prussia in the Far East, such as the island of Taiwan, but he realized that he lacked the manpower for a commitment of that size, and he did not want to jeopardize the treaty with China. Arcona led the squadron south to Siam, stopping in Nagasaki, Hong Kong, and Macao on the way, before anchoring off Paknam on 15 December. The ensuing negotiations with the Siamese government produced a trade agreement on 7 February 1862, permitting the Prussians to depart on 24 February for Singapore. There, the diplomats left the ships on 2 March to return home by rail or passenger ships.
At that time, the squadron was disbanded and the ships dispersed, Thetis going to South America while Arcona returned home. She stopped in Cape Town on 14 May and had reached Portsmouth by early August. There, Prince Adalbert of Prussia inspected the ship. Arcona was in need of major repairs by that point, which were carried out at Devonport. Part of the crew were sent home early, and by 17 September, the ship was ready to resume the voyage. She arrived in Danzig on 5 October, having spent 2 years, 8 months, and 27 days abroad. Arcona was decommissioned there on 22 November. The voyage proved to be an invaluable experience for the navy, which was still in its very early stage of development. It was also politically unifying, as the Prussian (State Diet) voted to pay the cost of the expedition nearly unanimously, despite the ongoing conflict between the left-wing German Progress Party and the government of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
Second Schleswig War