SMS Gazelle was an screw-driven frigate of the Prussian Navy built in the 1850s. 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. Gazelle was armed with a battery of twenty-six guns, and was capable of steaming at a speed of . Gazelle was laid down in 1855, launched in 1859, and commissioned in 1862.
The ship's first major operation began in late 1862, when she was chosen to carry the ratified treaties with Japan and China that had been concluded by the Eulenburg expedition. While in the latter country in early 1864, the Second Schleswig War against Denmark had broken out, and Gazelle attacked Danish merchant shipping in Asia, capturing four prizes before the war ended. She eventually arrived home in 1865. Gazelle was mobilized during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, but saw no action during the short conflict that resulted in the creation of the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation. She cruised in the Mediterranean Sea on a training voyage for naval cadets in 1866–1867, now a warship of the North German Federal Navy.
Gazelle was not recommissioned during the Franco-Prussian War, owing to the vast superiority of the French fleet. Now in the service of the (Imperial Navy) of unified Germany, Gazelle made a cruise to the Caribbean Sea from 1871 to 1873, sailing alone, at times with her sister ship , and ending the voyage with a larger squadron. From 1874 to 1876, Gazelle embarked on a major overseas voyage for scientific purposes, including part of Germany's observation of the 1874 transit of Venus. The scientific team aboard the ship also conducted ethnographic, zoological, and oceanographic research during the cruise. Gazelle was sent to the Mediterranean in 1877 in response to heightened tensions that eventually resulted in the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War in 1878. The ship saw limited service in the late 1870s and early 1880s, primarily as a training ship, before being struck from the naval register in 1884. She was used as a barracks ship until 1906, when she was sold to ship breakers.
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.
Gazelle 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. Gazelle 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.
Gazelle 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 Construction and initial operations
After being ordered on 2 November 1855, the ship was laid down on 3 December at the Royal Dockyard in Danzig. Work on the ship, which was named for the species of antelope, proceeded slowly owing to the very limited naval budgets of the period, along with delays in the delivery of her propulsion system. The lengthy construction time had the positive effect of allowing the ship's timbers to properly season before the hull was completed. She was launched without ceremony on 19 December 1859, and despite the pressing need for a warship to be sent to the Mediterranean Sea in response to the unrest in Italy during the unification of Italy, work continued slowly. The ship's first officer arrived on 5 June 1860 to oversee completion of the ship, including her rigging. Further delays were caused by the unreliable engines manufactured by AG Vulcan, which had only been founded in 1857. The originally planned training cruise scheduled for 1861 had to be cancelled, and the sail frigate was sent instead.
Gazelle was eventually completed on 22 May 1861, and commissioned into the Navy almost a year later on 15 May 1862. Her first commander was (KK—Corvette Captain) Eduard Heldt, who captained the ship during her initial sea trials and maiden voyage. Her full complement of sailors arrived by 3 July, along with the naval cadets of the 1860 and 1861 crew years. In early August, Gazelle departed on her first overseas trip, a training cruise to Brest, France, which she reached on 31 August. After a two-week stay, the ship departed Brest on 15 September, bound for Neufahrwasser, Prussia. Gazelle was intended to be deployed to the Black Sea in 1863—a right extended to several European powers after the Crimean War on 1853–1856—diplomatic events in East Asia saw these plans changed. The Eulenburg expedition, carried out aboard the frigate , had resulted in the signing of treaties with Siam, Qing China, and Japan. Japan demanded that a proper warship return to complete the ratification purpose, and Gazelle was chosen for the mission.
1862–1865 overseas cruise
Gazelle received orders to embark on the voyage to the Far East on 23 October 1862, and she departed from Neufahrwasser on 9 November. By 21 November, she had reached Gibraltar, where the crew visited a recently erected monument to the Prussian sailors who had died in the Battle of Tres Forcas in 1856. While still in Gibraltar in December, Heldt was replaced by KK Arthur von Bothwell, who was to captain the ship for the rest of the cruise. Gazelle got underway again in late January 1863, sailing initially west to Brazil, arriving in Rio de Janeiro in February. There, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil visited the ship. Gazelle thereafter sailed back across the Atlantic, passing the Cape of Good Hope, stopping in Anjer on the island of Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies, before arriving in Singapore on 31 May. The ship remained here until early July, when she sailed for Hong Kong, China, which she reached on 10 July. There, the Prussian consul general, Guido von Rehfues, came aboard the ship with a staff of five men. Rehfeus was to carry out the formal ratification of the treaties. Gazelle departed on 15 July, passing through Amoy on the way to Shanghai, where she remained from 21 to 30 July. The ship then sailed for Yokohama, Japan, arriving on 8 August.
Upon arriving in Yokohama, Gazelle found a diplomatic crisis. The isolationist Tokugawa shogunate had abrogated all foreign treaties and had begun expelling foreigners from the country. A civil conflict had also broken out between some of the daimyos, and the Satsuma Domain had opened hostilities with the British Royal Navy. The British squadron left Yokohama the day that Gazelle arrived; the city had a significant European settlement, and several French warships took responsibility for defending it, sending some 300 men ashore with field guns. The French commander requested that Bothwell support them, so Gazelle contributed a landing party of 107 men and two 12-pounder guns to reinforce the garrison. Soon thereafter, the British bombarded Kagoshima, inflicting significant damage and hardening Japanese anger at the Europeans. Bothwell sent another fifty men ashore to further strengthen the force in Yokohama. In the meantime, Rehfues attempted to negotiate a settlement, which was reached in November. The Japanese revoked their ban on foreign residents, and on 2 January 1864, Gazelle arrived in Tokyo, where the treaty that had been signed during the Eulenberg mission was formally ratified on 21 January. Later that day, after the Prussian ambassador Max von Brandt arrived, Gazelle sailed from Tokyo, stopping in Yokohama and Nagasaki on the way to Shanghai, where she stayed from 8 March to 6 April.
While in Shanghai, Bothwell learned of the start of the Second Schleswig War between Prussia and Denmark; he received orders to begin cruiser warfare against Danish merchant shipping. The ship disembarked the Prussian diplomatic delegation at Tianjin, who then traveled to Beijing; Gazelle thereafter began searching for Danish ships to attack. Her first cruise in Chinese waters was unsuccessful, but on her second voyage to Japan, she captured schooner Falk on 25 April; the brig Caroline of Schleswig-Holstein of 26 April; and on 5 May, the Danish brig Caterine. The Prussians later released Caroline. Orders to return home arrived in Beijing on 5 May, which Gazelle received when she stopped in Yantai, China, on 19 May. She then moved to Xiamen, China, before capturing the Danish schooner Chin-Chin; Bothwell was unaware that an armistice had ended the fighting in the Second Schleswig War. The ship thereafter stopped in Hong Kong in early June and then sailed on to Singapore, where she stayed from 16 July to early August. Gazelle passed through Anjer again on the way home and had reached Simon's Town, South Africa, by 14 September. Here, she received orders to sail through the West Indies to represent Prussia in the aftermath of the war. By 15 December, she had returned to European waters, anchoring in Cherbourg, France, that day. There, she underwent repairs after her lengthy voyage abroad, and she was ready to sail for home on 1 May 1865. She reached Neufahrwasser eight days later and was decommissioned there on 3 June.
Operations in 1866 Gazelle next recommissioned on 3 April 1866, as was with the Austrian Empire appeared to be imminent; the fleet received its mobilization orders on 12 May shortly before the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War. The Prussian fleet assembled a squadron at Kiel commanded by (Rear Admiral) Eduard von Jachmann, which Gazelle joined. The ship did not see action during the war, however. During a training cruise conducted in the western Baltic Sea later that year, a man went overboard, and a young naval cadet Alfred von Tirpitz nearly drowned in his attempt to rescue the sailor.