SMS was a built for the German Imperial Navy () in the late 1870s. The ship was named after the Prussian Field Marshal August von Gneisenau. She was the fifth member of the class, which included five other vessels. The -class corvettes were ordered as part of a major naval construction program in the early 1870s, and she was designed to serve as a fleet scout and on extended tours in Germany's colonial empire. was laid down in June 1877, launched in September 1879, and was commissioned into the fleet in October 1880. She was armed with a battery of fourteen guns and had a full ship rig to supplement her steam engine on long cruises abroad.
went abroad on two major foreign deployments in the first decade of her career. The first, in 1882, was to protect German nationals in Egypt during the 'Urabi revolt, though by the time she arrived, British forces had largely defeated the rebels, allowing to return home. The second, lengthier deployment came two years later and lasted from 1884 to 1886, and primarily focused on German colonial designs on eastern Africa. She was involved in the seizure of the colony of German East Africa in 1885, and she briefly toured German interests in the Pacific Ocean in 1886.
In 1887, began her service as a training ship, a role she held for more than a decade. During this period, she was generally occupied with training cruises and individual, squadron, and fleet training. Long-distance cruises frequently alternated between the West Indies and the Mediterranean Sea. While on one such cruise on 16 December 1900, the ship was driven into the mole outside Málaga by heavy winds and destroyed, with the loss of 41 officers and crew. Her wreck proved impossible to salvage, and so she was sold for scrap shortly after the accident.
Design
The six ships of the class were ordered in the early 1870s to supplement Germany's fleet of cruising warships, which at that time relied on several ships that were twenty years old. and her sister ships were intended to patrol Germany's colonial empire and safeguard German economic interests around the world. They were designed as a smaller and more economical version of the preceding s.
was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced at full load. The ship's crew consisted of 18 officers and 386 enlisted men. Her hull had a straight stem and was sheathed with zinc to prevent marine biofouling on long voyages abroad.
She was powered by a single marine steam engine that drove one 2-bladed screw propeller, with steam provided by four coal-fired fire-tube boilers, which was vented through a single, retractable funnel. Her propulsion system gave her a top speed of at . She had a cruising radius of at a speed of . As built, was equipped with a full ship rig, but this was later reduced.
was armed with a battery of sixteen 22-caliber (cal.) breech-loading guns and four 25-cal. guns. Her armament was revised several times during her career; by 1890, the number of 15 cm guns had been reduced to ten. She also had six Hotchkiss revolver cannon installed for close-range defense against torpedo boats. During another refit in the 1890s, she had four of her 15 cm guns restored, bringing the total to fourteen. She also received a pair of guns were added, along with four guns. In the early 1900s, she was rearmed with a pair of guns, ten 8.8 cm guns, and four 3.7 cm guns.
Service history Construction and first overseas deployment
The new corvette, ordered under the contract name "D", was laid down in June 1877 at the (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig (Gdańsk). She was launched on 4 September 1879, and was christened with the name , after the veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and Prussian military reformer (Field Marshal) August von Gneisenau, during the launching ceremony by Admiral Albrecht von Stosch, the head of the (Imperial Admiralty). She was commissioned on 3 October 1880 before work on the ship actually finished in order to transfer her to the in Kiel, where her guns were installed. Sea trials were then conducted, lasting from the end of December to 12 February 1881, after which she was decommissioned and placed in reserve. Her commander during this period was (KzS—Captain at Sea) Bartholomäus von Werner. At the time, Stosch had implemented a plan whereby Germany's colonies would be protected by gunboats, while larger warships would generally be kept in reserve, with a handful assigned to a flying squadron that could respond to crises quickly.
By the early 1880s, French and British controls in Egypt and particularly the Suez Canal produced the 'Urabi revolt, led by Ahmed ‘Urabi. In June 1882, the revolutionaries, angered by foreign influence in the country, murdered fifty Europeans, prompting the British Royal Navy to bombard Alexandria and then land forces to pursue the rebels. In the wake of the conflict, the German government determined that warships should be sent to protect Germans in the country. Initially hoping to avoid mobilizing any vessels in Germany to keep the cost of the operation to a minimum, the ordered a pair of gunboats, and , that had been returning from overseas deployments to proceed to Egypt. There, they sent sailors ashore to protect Germans in Alexandria and Port Said, respectively.
These two small vessels proved to be insufficient for the task, and so on 13 August, , the corvette , the aviso , and the gunboat were commissioned to reinforce them. They departed Kiel on 19 August, under the command of s captain KzS Max von der Goltz, who was made of the squadron. The ships arrived in Port Said on 21 August, and on 13 September the British defeated 'Urabi's forces at the Battle of Tell El Kebir, effectively ending the rebellion. The paddle steamer , the station ship in Constantinopel, joined the German squadron in the area. The German squadron remained in the area until December, primarily to protect the German embassy in Alexandria, when the squadron was disbanded; arrived back in Kiel on 24 December, where she was decommissioned on 9 January 1883, though and remained in the eastern Mediterranean Sea as a precaution against further unrest.
Second overseas deployment
was recommissioned for another tour abroad on 5 October 1884 to join the newly-formed West African Cruiser Squadron, which was commanded by (Rear Admiral) Eduard von Knorr aboard his flagship . The ship's new commander was KzS Victor Valois. While en route from Kiel to Wilhelmshaven to join the rest of the squadron, ran aground off the island of Lolland in heavy fog; she had to be towed free by the ironclad , though she was undamaged in the accident. The squadron left Wilhelmshaven on 30 October, bound for West Africa. While in the Cape Verde islands, Knorr detached to Cape Town, where she arrived on 8 January 1885. There, she embarked Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs, who had been appointed consul to Zanzibar, and took him to the island on 28 January. then went to the port of Lamu to survey the coast of eastern Africa, particularly the area around Wituland. s survey of the area led the German government to instruct Rohlfs to accept the offer of the Witu Sultan, Ahmed ibn Fumo Bakari, to form a protectorate on 27 May.
left Zanzibar on 1 April, bound for Melbourne, Australia, where she was to meet the corvette in August, but sank in the Bab-el-Mandeb. instead proceeded on to Port Louis on the island of Mauritius. There, she met the cruiser squadron commanded by Carl Paschen, which included her sister ship and the corvette , the frigate , and the supply ship . Paschen had been tasked to take his squadron to East Africa to settle disputes over the German protectorate with the Sultan of Zanzibar, Barghash bin Said, which he accomplished by mid-August. On 18 August, arrived with Knorr, who replaced Paschen as the squadron commander. Knorr sent to Wituland, where Valois informed Bakari that the Sultan of Zanzibar had agreed to recognize the protectorate and stop interfering in the internal affairs of Wituland. After anchoring in Lamu on 28 August, sent a contingent ashore, led by the executive officer, Curt von Prittwitz und Gaffron, to hold a parade to celebrate the agreement. Three days later, Valois took three officers and twenty-nine enlisted men to the Witu capital to meet Bakari, returning to the ship on 4 September.
departed Lamu on 6 September and went to Kismayu, before proceeding on to Zanzibar four days later. In the meantime, Paschen had been instructed to form a second cruiser squadron, which was to consist of his flagship , along with and . The squadron was to proceed to the Caroline Islands, which were at the center of a dispute between Germany and Spain. first went to Cape Town, arriving on 11 October. While there, she received new orders to proceed instead to what was now German East Africa; on 9 November she was formally reassigned back to Knorr's squadron. patrolled the coast of East Africa until 6 March 1886, when Knorr's squadron, at that time consisting of , , and the corvette , departed for Australia. After reaching the south Pacific, the ships toured Australian ports, New Zealand, Tonga, and Samoa before was detached first to the Gazelle Peninsula on the island of New Pomerania to suppress an uprising against German colonial rule. She then went to the Palau Islands, part of the Caroline group, to retrieve a German monument, as Germany had dropped its claim to the islands in favor of Spain. On 25 July, began the journey back to Germany, reaching Kiel on 27 September. She was decommissioned there on 14 October.
Training ship duties
1887–1895 returned to service on 13 April 1887 under the command of KzS August von Thomsen, now in the role of a training ship for naval cadets and four-year enlisted volunteers. In late May, she joined the Training Squadron, which was present at the ceremony marking the beginning on construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal on 3 June. The squadron took part in the annual fleet training exercises that began on 6 August; during the maneuvers, the squadron filled the role of the II Division of the main fleet. After the exercises concluded the following month, the Training Squadron embarked on a winter cruise to the Mediterranean. During this voyage, the squadron flagship, , caught fire and had to be docked for repairs, during which time served as the flagship from 19 November 1887 to 8 January 1888. On the way back to Germany in 1888, the ships stopped at Cape St. Vincent and in Funchal, before arriving back in Wilhelmshaven on 10 April. proceeded on to Kiel, where she underwent an overhaul. The ship embarked on individual training exercises after returning to service before rejoining the Training Squadron on 25 June. The following month, the squadron escorted Kaiser Wilhelm II on a tour of Scandinavian ports aboard the ironclad .