The class was a group of six screw corvettes built by the German in the late 1870s and 1880s. The class comprised , the lead ship, , , , , and . They were ordered to replace older sailing vessels that were no longer sufficient to protect German interests around the world. Intended for service in the German colonial empire, the ships were designed with a combination of steam and sail power for extended cruising range, and they were equipped with a battery of ten guns. Relying primarily on sail power for their long-range deployments, the ships were obsolescent before construction began.

The six ships were all sent on lengthy overseas deployments throughout their careers, with assignments to Germany's colonial holdings in Africa—Togo, German South West Africa and German East Africa—and in the Pacific, German New Guinea and later the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory. They were frequently used to suppress local uprisings against German rule, punish those who attacked German citizens or businesses, and show the flag. On several occasions, ships of the class were badly damaged in accidents— running aground off New Mecklenburg and being rammed by a merchant vessel, both in 1884, and being forced ashore by a cyclone in 1889—but none of the members of the class were lost.

Several of the corvettes were used for training purposes, taking part in fleet exercises, extended training cruises with naval cadets, and in the case of and later in their careers, as dedicated gunnery training ships. No longer useful as cruising warships by the 1890s, all of the ships of the class were withdrawn from active service by the end of the decade. Some were used for training purposes, but was too worn out from her years abroad to permit further use, was too expensive to convert into a training ship, and was instead used as a barracks ship. Between 1904 and 1908, all of the -class corvettes were broken up for scrap, with the exception of , which lingered on as a floating barracks until she too went to the breakers in 1920.

Design As German commercial interests began to expand to overseas markets in Asia and the Pacific in the 1870s, the need for long-range cruising warships became increasingly severe, particularly as other European powers started to exclude German businesses from activity abroad. By the mid-1870s, the fleet of corvettes available to the German (Imperial Navy) was rapidly ageing, with several vessels already twenty years old. At the time, the world's navies were grappling with the development of steam power, which had already replaced sails in large ironclad warships. Cruising vessels required a much longer radius of action than the ironclads, and steam engines were not yet reliable or efficient enough to rely on them alone, necessitating the retention of traditional sailing rigs.

In 1875, the design for a new class of screw corvettes was prepared, and six ships were ordered, the last two to a modified design. The design for the class was based on the preceding s, though they were reduced in size. Despite the fact that they were intended to modernize the German cruising fleet, their design was obsolescent before construction even began, capable of engaging only similar vessels. Nevertheless, the -class corvettes and the other cruisers available succeeded in expanding Germany's colonial empire, particularly in the central Pacific in the 1880s and 1890s.

General characteristics

The first four ships of the class were long at the waterline and long overall, with a beam of and a draft of forward. The last two ships, and , were slightly larger, at at the waterline and overall, with a beam of and a draft of forward. The first four ships displaced as designed and at full load, and the larger vessels displaced as designed and fully laden.

The ships' hulls were constructed with iron frames that provided the structure for the wood hull planks, over which a layer of zinc was applied to protect the wood from biofouling. and received copper sheathing instead of zinc. The stem and sternpost were also iron, except for the last two vessels, which had bronze sternposts. The first four vessels had nine watertight compartments, while the last two had eleven; all six ships had a double bottom under the engine room.

Steering was controlled with a single rudder, and all six ships maneuvered well under steam, and better under sail. They rolled and pitched badly and lost significant speed in a head sea, though they handled well in bad weather. and had a crew that consisted of 25 officers and 244 enlisted men, though as school ships their crews were reduced to 13 officers and 135 enlisted, which left room for 150 cadets aboard each vessel. had a complement of 10 officers and 244 enlisted, while had 10 officers and 265 enlisted. and each had a crew of 25 officers and 257 enlisted. Each corvette carried several smaller boats; and had two picket boats, two cutters, two yawls, and one dinghy, while the other four vessels each had one picket boat, one launch, two cutters, two yawls, and two dinghies.

Machinery

and were powered by a single horizontal, 3-cylinder, double-expansion steam engine that drove one 2-bladed screw propeller that was wide in diameter. Steam was provided by eight coal-fired fire-tube boilers, which were ducted into two funnels. and had a 2-cylinder steam engine, with a propeller that was wide, and they had two fewer boilers and only one funnel. and had two engines and eight boilers, and both vessels had two funnels. Electricity was provided by one generator that produced at 55 volts. Each vessel had a capacity for of coal storage for the boilers.

The first four ships had a designed speed of under steam from , though they all exceeded those figures. , the slowest ship of the class, reached a top speed of , while and both made . and , with their additional engine, were rated for 14 knots from ; the former achieved her designed speed and the latter exceeded it slightly, reaching on speed trials. The first four ships had a cruising radius of at a speed of .

The ships were equipped with a three-masted barque rig with a surface area of to supplement their steam engines on their long deployments abroad, where coal might be scarce. After they were converted into gunnery training ships, and had their sailing rig removed, and they received heavy military masts with fighting tops for light weapons.

Armament The ships of the class were armed with a battery of ten 22-caliber (cal.) breech-loading guns, which were supplied with a total of 1,000 rounds of ammunition. The guns had a range of . They also carried two 24-cal. guns with 200 rounds of ammunition and six Hotchkiss revolver cannon. and had newer 30-cal. versions of the 15 cm guns, which had a range of , and were supplied with 730 shells. They also carried four 35-cal. guns with 400 rounds; these guns had a range of . Like their sisters, they also had six revolver cannon.

For , which was converted into a gunnery training ship in the early 1890s, the 15 cm guns were later reduced to six and then four guns, and the 8.7 cm guns were replaced by a pair of 10.5 cm SK L/35 guns, eight SK L/30 guns, and two SK L/40 guns. As converted as a gunnery training ship for automatic weapons, later carried just two 8.8 cm guns and ten 3.7 cm machine cannon of unrecorded type.

Ships + Construction data Ship Builder Laid down Launched Completed AG Vulcan, Stettin 1879 27 November 1880 1 September 1881 11 December 1880 9 January 1882 , Hamburg 1880 20 August 1881 1 May 1883 , Danzig January 1880 10 November 1881 10 August 1882 , Kiel February 1882 7 February 1885 6 October 1886 , Danzig 1881 7 May 1885 1 December 1886

Service history

Carola

, named for Carola of Saxony, was sent on two major overseas deployments during her career. The first came immediately after entering service in 1881 and lasted into 1883. She went to the central Pacific Ocean to protect German interests in Samoa and Melanesia, and later went to southern Africa, and was the first German warship to reach what would become German Southwest Africa. While in the Pacific, she conducted a punitive operation against locals in the Hermit Islands who had murdered a pair of German citizens and nine locals who had worked for them. While at the island of Buka in 1883, her crew named a previously unused harbor "Queen Carola Harbor", after their vessel's namesake. After returning to Germany in 1883, she was laid up until 1886, during which time she received a torpedo tube.

Her second deployment came in 1886 and saw alternate between German East Africa and the Pacific as part of a cruising squadron commanded by Eduard von Knorr, Karl Eduard Heusner, and later Karl August Deinhard. The squadron's time in the Pacific was uneventful, and consisted of visiting ports in East Asia and patrolling Germany's holdings in the central Pacific in German New Guinea. During operations off East Africa from 1888 to 1890, she participated in anti-slave trade operations, which included the capture of a dhow carrying 78 slaves that were freed. She also helped suppress the Abushiri revolt, sending marines ashore to fight the rebels and providing gunfire support to German forces led by Major Hermann Wissmann.

After returning to Germany in 1891, was converted into a gunnery training ship, as she was by then obsolete as a warship. She served in this capacity, in company with the training ship and through the 1890s and early 1900s, with this duty being interrupted in 1897, when she was used as a target ship. was decommissioned in 1905, sold the following year, and broken up for scrap in Hamburg.

Olga

In the course of her career, was sent abroad on three major deployments. The first, uneventful voyage came in 1882, and took the vessel to South American waters to show the flag for a year and a half. During the cruise, Prince Heinrich of Prussia served aboard the ship. The second cruise came shortly thereafter, when unrest in the German colony of Kamerun necessitated the formation of a West African Squadron to suppress it. and three other corvettes send marines ashore to battle local forces resisting German rule. After defeating the rebellion, returned to Germany in 1885, and she thereafter served as a training ship, though this activity lasted only a few months before she was again ordered abroad.

Her third cruise began in September 1885, and initially saw the ship sent to German East Africa to join the cruising squadron. She was tasked with patrolling the coast of the German protectorate of Wituland; she also forced the extradition of two locals who had murdered a German explorer. In 1887, the squadron was sent to the Pacific, and arrived in Samoa in August that year. She sent men ashore to fight Samoan rebels opposed to the German-backed government in the First Battle of Vailele. While in the harbor at Apia in 1889, was badly damaged by a powerful cyclone and was forced to leave the station for repairs; two other German vessels were destroyed by the storm, but s crew were able to salvage the ship.

From 1890, saw limited service in a variety of subsidiary roles. She was used as a training ship from 1893 to 1897, when she was transferred to the Fishery School. She conducted an extensive survey in Spitzbergen in 1898 before being decommissioned late in the year, to be converted into a gunnery training ship. She served in that capacity until 1905, when she was stricken from the naval register. was sold for scrap the following year and was broken up in Hamburg in 1908.

Marie