SMS Elisabeth was the final member of the of steam frigates built for the Prussian Navy in the 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. Elisabeth was armed with a battery of twenty-eight guns, and was capable of steaming at a speed of . Elisabeth was laid down in 1866, launched in 1868, and commissioned in 1869, by which time the Prussian Navy had been replaced by the North German Federal Navy.
Elisabeth joined a squadron that was sent to the Mediterranean Sea for the opening ceremonies for the Suez Canal in late 1869. She was activated during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, first as a guard ship during the French blockade of the North German coast. Plans to deploy the ship as a commerce raider later in the war came to nothing due to repeated problems with her propulsion system. After the war, in late 1872, she joined a squadron sent to the Caribbean Sea to protect German interests in the region. The following year, the squadron was recalled to the coast of Spain to protect German interests during the Third Carlist War there. The squadron was disbanded in early 1874, allowing Elisabeth to be sent to East Asia, but she was ordered home in early 1875. The ship embarked on another major overseas voyage in 1876, intended to be a circumnavigation of the globe. During the voyage in early 1878, she led an intervention in Nicaragua to force a payment owed to a German businessman. Elisabeth arrived home later that year.
The ship made two further overseas cruises in the early 1880s; the first, from 1881 to 1883, took the ship back to East Asia. Her time there passed relatively uneventfully, apart from an intervention in Xiamen on behalf of a German business there. The second overseas cruise lasted from 1884 to 1886, and during this voyage, she was heavily involved with the expansion of the German colonial empire, first in West Africa, then formally proclaiming the colony of German South West Africa. In 1885, she participated in flag-raising ceremonies in the colonies of Neupommern and Kaiser-Wilhelmsland. The cruise ended with the ship participating in a naval demonstration to defend Germany's claim to Wituland, which would soon become German East Africa. Limited training activities followed in the mid-1880s, until she was struck from the naval register in 1887. She was then used as a barracks ship, and then as a stationary training ship from 1888 to 1903. She was sold to ship breakers the following year, though some parts of the ship were preserved.
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. The last vessel, Elisabeth, was modified slightly compared to the rest of the class, with a slightly larger hull, a different stern shape, and a smaller number of guns (albeit of a more modern type).
Elisabeth 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. Elisabeth 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.
Elisabeth was armed with a battery of twenty-eight 68-pounder guns. By 1869, she had been rearmed with a battery of seventeen RK L/22 guns.
Service history Construction and voyage to the Suez Canal
Authorization for a fifth frigate of the Arcona class was granted on 22 February 1866. The keel for Elisabeth was laid down at the (Royal Dockyard) in Danzig on 1 May 1866. She was launched on 18 October 1868 and named after Elisabeth, the dowager queen. The wife of General Edwin Freiherr von Manteuffel performed the christening ceremony. By that time, Prussia had begun the process of German unification, and Elisabeth was the first ship to be launched under the flag of the North German Confederation. The date of the launching was chosen because it was the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig, as well as the birthday of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm. After completing fitting out work, she was commissioned into active service on 29 September 1869, under the command of (KK—Corvette Captain) Hermann Robert Przewisinski. Sea trials were skipped so that Elisabeth could be sent as part of the squadron that represented North Germany at the opening of the Suez Canal; the other vessels included her sister ships and , the aviso , and the gunboat . Elisabeth was only partially armed by that time, and part of her battery deck was converted to accommodation space for Friedrich Wilhelm and his entourage.
On 4 October, Elisabeth sailed from Neufahrwasser, stopping briefly in Kiel to embark a pair of engineers, who were to evaluate the ship's engine on the first leg of the voyage. By the time she reached Plymouth, United Kingdom, the engineers had determined that the engine had been installed badly and would require repairs. The ship nevertheless continued on to the Mediterranean Sea, stopping in Valletta, Malta; and Limassol and Beirut in the Ottoman Empire. On 15 November, Elisabeth joined the rest of the German squadron in Port Said, Ottoman Egypt, and the northern end of the Suez Canal. After the conclusion of the opening ceremonies on 1 December, the squadron was disbanded and Elisabeth embarked Friedrich Wilhelm and his entourage to carry them first to Naples, Italy. Friedrich Wilhelm went to meet King Vittorio Emanuele II.
She then sailed on to La Spezia, where the group returned to the ship. Elisabeth carried them to Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, and then returned to Italy to pick up a block of marble in Civitavecchia; the Pope had donated it for use in the Aachen Cathedral. During a subsequent stop in Cannes, France, Elisabeth was inspected by Prince Heinrich and Prince Wilhelm, then boys aged 10 and 7, respectively; officers took Heinrich to the top of the ship's rigging, though Wilhelm was not due to his crippled left arm. The ship stopped in Portsmouth, United Kingdom, on the way home, where it was found she needed to have her screw replaced; the work took six weeks to complete. During that time, a contingent from her crew were sent to bring the ship of the line to Germany, which had been purchased from the Royal Navy for use as a training ship. Elisabeth then sailed to Vlissingen, the Netherlands, where the marble block was unloaded. From there, she sailed on to Kiel, arriving on 4 April, and she was decommissioned there on 23 April. After the voyage, Friedrich Wilhelm instructed General Albrecht von Stosch, a member of his party, to write a report on their experience aboard the ship. Stosch was very critical of the ship's condition and the state of training of the crew.
1870–1875 On 10 July 1870, Elisabeth was recommissioned for service during the Franco-Prussian War; the crew of the training ship were used to reactivate Elisabeth. The navy initially planned to deploy Elisabeth to its North Sea naval base at Wilhelmshaven, but reports of French warships already approaching the port led to a change of orders. Instead, the ship would be used to defend the mine barrier protecting the entrance to Kiel at Friedrichsort. She was supported in this role by Renown and the aviso . The French briefly attempted to impose a blockade of the German coast, but after they withdrew, the Germans made plans to send Elisabeth to attack French shipping as a commerce raider. In early October, she, Grille, and several gunboats sailed to Wilhelmshaven, and during the voyage, they evaded French vessels in heavy fog. Elisabeths propulsion system proved to be problematic once again, and she was forced to stop in Glückstadt after her screw broke. Repairs were carried out, but after departing on 21 October, the propeller shaft broke, forcing the ship to be towed to Wilhelmshaven. She was the first vessel to be dry docked in the new facility there. After repairs were completed, Elisabeth was ordered in mid-January 1871 to sail to the Caribbean Sea (taking a route around the United Kingdom to avoid the French coast) to support the gunboat , but by that time, a ceasefire had come into effect that ended the fighting. Instead, Elisabeth was sent back to Kiel in company with the ironclad warship on 29 March, though severe storms delayed their arrival. Elisabeth was decommissioned there on 21 April.
Elisabeth was recommissioned on 18 December 1871, under the command of KK Paul von Reibnitz. She was to join a squadron of warships being sent to Central and South America, in part in response to mistreatment of the crew of the corvette by Brazilian police in Rio de Janeiro. But Stosch, who had become the first Chief of the German Imperial Admiralty after the Prussian victory in 1871 saw the creation of the German Empire, canceled the planned operation over a dispute with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Elisabeth was accordingly decommissioned on 26 January 1872. At this time, she was placed in the category of First Reserve, which kept the ship in a state of readiness that allowed reactivation within five days.
Over the course of 1872, attacks on Germans in Haiti and Colombia prompted Stosch to reconsider his decision to cancel the deployment of warships to Central America, and on 1 October, Elisabeth was recommissioned, along with the ironclad and the gunboat . The squadron was placed under the command of Reinhold von Werner; at that time, Elisabeths captain was KK Otto Livonius. The three ships sailed from Wilhelmshaven on 10 October, and by 3 December, had reached Bridgetown, Barbados, where they joined Elisabeths sisters and . The five ships cruised through the Caribbean over the next few months, and soon after arriving in the region, Werner took the squadron to Colombia, where their presence convinced the government to pay a subsidy that had been promised to a German company that had build a railway line in the country. In early March 1873, Werner received orders to take the squadron to the coast of Spain to protect Germans during the Third Carlist War.