SMS was a protected cruiser of the , built for the German Imperial Navy () in the 1890s, along with her sister ships , , , and . was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin in 1896, launched in March 1898, and commissioned into the Navy in April 1899. The ship was armed with a battery of two 21 cm guns and eight 15 cm guns and had a top speed of . Though the five Victoria Louise-class cruisers proved to be disappointing in some ways, they marked the beginning of a decade of German cruiser construction.
served abroad in the East Asia Squadron for the first six years of her career, and during the first few years of this deployment, she served as the deputy commander's flagship. She saw action during the Boxer Uprising in Qing China in 1900, contributing a landing party to the force that captured the Taku Forts and the subsequent Seymour Expedition. Over the next four years, she toured the region, visiting numerous ports from Japan to Australia. In August 1904, she participated in the internment of the Russian battleship after the Battle of the Yellow Sea during the Russo-Japanese War.
After returning to Germany in 1906, she was modernized and used as a training ship in 1909, following the completion of the refit. Over the next few years, she embarked on numerous training cruises, including a major voyage to the Mediterranean Sea in 1909–1910 and another to the United States in 1911–1912. At the outbreak of World War I, was mobilized into V Scouting Group, serving as its flagship, but she served in front-line duty only briefly. She was used as a barracks ship after 1915, and ultimately sold for scrapping in 1920.
Design
In the early 1890s, elements in the German naval command structure grappled with what type of cruiser ought to be built to fulfill the various needs of the fleet. The (RMA—Imperial Navy Office) preferred to build a combination of large cruisers of around along the lines of and significantly smaller vessels of about to support them, while the (Naval High Command) argued that a uniform force of cruisers was preferable. In the event, the RMA carried the day and three 6,000-ton cruisers were authorized in 1895; this was in part due to the intervention of Kaiser Wilhelm II and in part due to comparisons with foreign contemporaries, like the United States' and the Austro-Hungarian . The experience of Japanese cruisers during the contemporaneous First Sino-Japanese War showed the benefit of larger guns, which were adopted for the main battery of the Victoria Louise class. For the 1896/1897 fiscal year, another pair of ships were authorized, and one of these became .
They resembled the larger s, designed at the same time, albeit at reduced scale. The new cruisers proved to be unsatisfactory as fleet cruisers, because they were too slow and they lacked sufficient armor protection. They nevertheless provided good service as overseas cruisers and later as training ships. They (along with the contemporaneous armored cruiser ) nevertheless marked the beginning of a trend of German cruiser construction that lasted through the s built a decade later.
Characteristics
was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. As designed, she displaced , and at full load, her displacement rose to . The ship's superstructure included a large conning tower forward and a smaller deck house further aft. She was fitted with a heavy military mast atop the conning tower and a lighter pole mast further aft. Her hull featured a flared clipper bow combined with a pronounced ram. The ship had a crew of 31 officers and 446 enlisted men.
Her propulsion system consisted of three vertical 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single screw propeller. Steam was provided by eighteen coal-fired Belleville boilers, which were vented through three funnels. Her engines were rated for , and provided a top speed of . Coal storage amounted to if all available spaces were used. The ship had a range of approximately at the more economical speed of .
The ship was armed with a main battery of two SK L/40 guns in single gun turrets, one forward and one aft. The guns were supplied with 58 rounds of ammunition each. They had a range of . also carried a secondary battery of eight SK L/40 guns. Four were mounted in turrets amidships and the other four were placed in casemates, two abreast the conning tower and the others abreast the mainmast. These guns had a range of . She also carried ten SK L/30 guns for defense against torpedo boats. The gun armament was rounded out by ten Maxim machine cannon. She was also equipped with three torpedo tubes with eight torpedoes, two launchers were mounted on the broadside and the third was in the bow, all below the waterline.
The ship was protected with Krupp armor; her deck was on the horizontal with sloped sides that were thick. Her main and secondary battery turrets had 10 cm thick sides and the secondary casemates had the same level of protection. The conning tower had 15 cm thick sides.
Modifications Between 1907 and 1909, underwent a major reconstruction at the (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig. This included replacing her boilers with new Navy-type models, and the funnels were reduced to two. Her military mast was removed to reduce the top-heaviness of the ship, which improved her handling in turns. Two of the 15 cm guns and all of the Maxim guns were removed, and an eleventh 8.8 cm SK L/30 gun was installed, along with three 8.8 cm SK L/35 guns. She was disarmed entirely by 1916.
Service history
was ordered under the contract name "N", and was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin on 23 July 1896, though some initial assembly of material had begun in workshops on 27 April. She was launched on 12 March 1898, having been christened by Johann Georg Mönckeberg, then the 2nd Mayor of Hamburg, one of the Hanseatic cities, which reflected a tradition of the Hanseatic League, after which had been named. Initial testing of her steam plant began on 14 October, and on 16 November, a shipyard crew took the ship to Swinemünde for a test cruise in the Baltic Sea three days later. was then taken to Kiel, where her armament was installed, along with other final fitting out. She was commissioned on 20 April 1899 and began sea trials; during this period, she was commanded by (KzS–Captain at Sea) Emil Freiherr von Lyncker. During her initial working up period on 6 June, she accidentally ran aground in the Great Belt due to heavy fog. She was pulled free by the coastal defense ships and , but her hull was damaged in the incident. In July, Lyncker was relieved by (FK—Frigate Captain) Hugo von Pohl. completed her acceptance trials on 11 August, though her propulsion machinery had not yet been fully evaluated, and she was not yet fully operational.
East Asia Squadron 1899–1900 was immediately assigned to the East Asia Squadron, owing to the need to replace the generally obsolete vessels Germany had previously sent to the unit, and she departed Germany on 16 August, bound for the Far East. Her engines and boilers proved troublesome on the voyage. She stopped in the Levant from 31 August to 4 September to deliver gifts from Kaiser Wilhelm II to holy sites in Jerusalem and Haifa. The ship then passed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and into the Indian Ocean, before stopping in the Maldives to conduct a hydrographic survey of the islands. stopped in Colombo, British Ceylon, on 29 September for a rest period for the engine room personnel, who had become overworked dealing with repeated breakdowns on the way. At one point in the Indian Ocean, all three engines and the electric generators had failed, forcing the crew to deploy sea anchors for several hours while repairs were carried out. left Colombo on 7 October and arrived in Singapore on 13 October, remaining there for four days.
After getting underway again on the 17th, the ship suffered a boiler explosion that killed two men, forcing to return to Singapore. She then left for Amoy, China, on 26 October, where her sister and the armored cruiser arrived on 2 and 4 November, respectively. At that time, served as the flagship of the squadron commander, (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Prince Heinrich of Prussia. replaced the elderly as the deputy commander's flagship, and (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Ernst Fritze came aboard the ship on the 4th. sailed to Shanghai on 11 November, before returning south to Hong Kong on 2 December for a major engine overhaul that was completed on 28 December. Prince Heinrich departed with for Germany on 4 January 1900, leaving Fritze in command of the unit aboard until VAdm Felix von Bendemann arrived 17 February, who made his flagship. After a cruise south to Singapore, arrived in Qingdao in Germany's Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory in China on 15 March. Fritze left for Germany as well on 8 April, and his replacement, KAdm Hermann Kirchhoff arrived aboard in mid-July.
then embarked on a cruise through the region but this was interrupted by the outbreak of the Boxer Uprising in China. The ship arrived off the Taku Forts on 7 June, where she joined an international fleet led by the British Vice Admiral Edward Seymour. The fleet attacked the fortifications on 16–17 June, resulting in the Battle of the Taku Forts, where , , the unprotected cruiser , and the protected cruiser landed detachments of (marines) to seize the forts. Pohl, s captain, went ashore and led the attack on the fortresses. Seymour then organized an expedition to relieve the besieged embassies in Beijing. contributed a landing party of 123 men led by the ship's executive officer, (Captain Lieutenant) Paul Schlieper, to the Seymour Expedition. A total of around 450 German troops were contributed to the multi-national force, which totaled around 2,200 officers and men. Pohl was then placed in command of a group of cruisers from the international fleet. led the unit to conduct a series of attacks on coastal fortifications at Beidaihe, Qinhuangdao, and Shanhaiguan. The ship thereafter saw no further action during the conflict. In the course of operations, s crew had suffered thirteen dead and twenty-four wounded, the heaviest casualties of any German warship involved in the conflict.
1901–1906 thereafter withdrew from Chinese waters to visit Nagasaki, Japan, in mid-October. From there, she departed for Hong Kong on 30 December, where she entered dry dock for periodic maintenance. While she was there, KAdm Hunold von Ahlefeld replaced Kirchhoff as the squadron deputy commander and FK Adolf Paschen relieved Pohl. She then returned to Tsingtao on 5 March 1901. Toward the end of the month, received orders to steam to Australia to represent Germany for the ceremonies commemorating the Federation of Australia. The ship got underway on 31 March and sailed via Singapore and Batavia, Dutch East Indies, and Fremantle, Australia, before arriving in Melbourne on 1 May. There, she met the unprotected cruiser . The two vessels then joined an international squadron for the ceremonies, which was observed by Prince Albert, Duke of York. The fleet then steamed to Sydney on 18 May, where the ceremonies took place. then cruised briefly with the gunboat , then in use as a survey ship, before departing on 24 May to return to Tsingtao, by way of Matupi Harbor, New Britain, and Manila in the Philippines. She arrived in Tsingtao on 19 June. For the rest of the year, cruised around the station area, visiting numerous ports in East Asia.