SMS was a protected cruiser of the , built for the German Imperial Navy () in the 1890s. was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in 1895, launched in April 1897, and commissioned into the Navy in July 1898. 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 -class cruisers proved to be disappointing in some ways, they marked the beginning of a decade of German cruiser construction.
The ship's first major operation was a cruise to the Mediterranean Sea to escort Kaiser Wilhelm II; while there, received orders to join the East Asia Squadron. She operated there for the first six years of her career, and during that time, she served briefly as the Squadron flagship in 1900. Her crew saw significant action during the Boxer Uprising in 1900; contributed landing parties to the Seymour Expedition and to the force that captured the Taku Forts. The following four years passed peacefully for the ship, but by late 1904 she was in need of a thorough overhaul that necessitated a return to Germany.
After arriving in Germany in 1905, she was modernized and used as a training ship in 1908, following the completion of the refit. made several training cruises over the following years, including a visit to the United States in 1909. She cruised with the Mediterranean Division in 1912. At the outbreak of World War I, was mobilized into V Scouting Group, but 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 class.
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 twelve 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 1906 and 1908, 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, so that her guns could be used ashore during World War I.
Service history Construction and initial service
, named after the earlier screw frigate , was ordered under the contract name "K". She was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin on 15 February 1896, though some assembly of materials had begun in workshops on 15 October 1895. She was launched on 14 April 1897, and Ludwig, the son of Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria, christened the ship at the launching ceremony. Tests of the ship's steam plant began on 24 April 1898, while the ship was still incomplete. In June, Kaiser Wilhelm II came to inspect the ship; his interest stemmed in part from his role in the design process. The still unfinished ship was then moved to the (Imperial Shipyard) in Kiel for fitting-out work, and while there, she was lightly rammed by the ironclad . The ship was commissioned into the German navy on 23 July 1898 to begin sea trials. (Corvette Captain) Guido von Usedom was the ship's first commander. During her trials, her measured mile tests were filmed with Oskar Messter's black-and-white kinetoscope. The ship's initial testing revealed problems with her boilers, but she nevertheless was sent with the aviso to escort Kaiser Wilhelm II aboard his yacht on a voyage to the Mediterranean Sea.
got underway from Kiel on 18 September, stopped in Gibraltar, and arrived in Venice, Italy, on 4 October, where she met and . The ships then visited a number of ports in the region, including Constantinople, Jaffa, Haifa, Beirut, and Port Said in the Ottoman Empire. While in Beirut on 11 November, the unit was disbanded and was assigned to relieve the old ironclad in the International Squadron that had been assembled in response to the Cretan Revolt. But s boilers had suffered serious damage during the voyage, owing to design defects, and she was instead forced to go to Genoa, Italy, on 14 November at low speed for repairs. While entering the port on the night of 26–27 November, was struck by a merchant vessel that was torn from its moorings by a strong gale. The ship damaged s upper deck and tore off a boat davit. She then entered the Gio. Ansaldo & C. shipyard for repairs; while the work was ongoing, received orders to sail for the East Asia Squadron once she was ready for service again.
East Asia Squadron
After completing repairs, briefly conducted trials to ensure that her propulsion system was in working order before departing for East Asia on 11 April 1899. She stopped in Singapore on 21 May and arrived at Qingdao in the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory, Germany's colonial possession in China, on 8 June. Her arrival allowed the old ironclad to return to Germany. At the same time, (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Ernst Fritze, the deputy commander of the East Asia Squadron, temporarily made his flagship. The vessel then began a tour of the northern part of the station, sometimes cruising with other vessels of the squadron, before turning south, arriving in Amoy, China, on 2 November. There, she met her sister ship , which Fritze made his new flagship. From there, cruised to Hong Kong in company with the squadron flagship, the old ironclad . While there, went into dry dock for maintenance that lasted three months while left for home; the squadron commander, (Vice Admiral) Felix von Bendemann, transferred his flag to on 17 February 1900.
In early April, began a tour of Japan, where she was visited by Emperor Meiji. At that time, the East Asia Squadron consisted of , , the protected cruisers and , and the unprotected cruiser . The five cruisers rendezvoused in Qingdao on 23 April for squadron training exercises that lasted into early May. The ships then dispersed for cruises through the region; and steamed up the Yangtze river as far as Hankou in mid-May. Later that month, the ships all returned to Qingdao. was scheduled to steam to Tianjin to take Bendemann and the German Minister to China, Clemens von Ketteler, to visit the Qing imperial court, but on 29 May, early reports of the Boxer Uprising had reached the Germans, leading them to cancel the visit.
Boxer Uprising The Europeans in the region were not initially concerned with the unrest, but as the situation worsened, the British Vice Admiral Edward Seymour, the longest-serving vice admiral in the area, contacted the other European naval commanders and requested a meeting to discuss what measures should be taken. Bendemann ordered his squadron, less , which was to remain behind to guard Qingdao, to meet the ships of the British China Station off Taku at the mouth of the Hai River. and the rest of the squadron arrived off Taku on 8 June, and Bendemann met with Seymour the next day. The two admirals did not initially agree on a course of action, owing to the lack of information about the general situation, since the telegraph line to the embassies in Beijing had been cut. Bendemann nevertheless sent a landing party of one hundred men drawn from all four of his cruisers ashore to reinforce the men in Tianjin that had been gathered from the Eight Nation Alliance, which had formed to combat the Boxers.