SMS Arminius

SMS   was an ironclad warship of the Prussian Navy, later the Imperial German Navy. The vessel was a turret ship that was designed by the British Royal Navy Captain Cowper Coles and built by the Samuda Brothers shipyard in Cubitt Town, London as a speculative effort; Prussia purchased the ship during the Second Schleswig War against Denmark, though the vessel was not delivered until after the war. The ship was armed with four guns in a pair of revolving gun turrets amidships. She was named for Arminius, the victor of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

served as a coastal defense ship for the first six years of her service with the Prussian Navy. She saw extensive service in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars during the process of German unification. The vessel was the primary challenge to the French blockade of German ports during the latter conflict. After the wars, was withdrawn from front-line service and used in a variety of secondary roles, including as a training ship for engine-room crews and as a tender for the school ship . The ship was eventually sold in 1901 and broken up for scrap the following year.

Design

The warship that came to be SMS was designed by Captain Cowper Coles, a British Royal Navy officer and advocate of turret-armed ironclad warships. was nearly identical to the Danish ironclad , also designed by Coles.

General characteristics and machinery

was long at the waterline and long overall. The ship had a beam of and a draft of forward and aft. She was designed to displace but at full load, displaced up to . The vessel was constructed with transverse frames and constructed with an iron hull, which contained eight watertight compartments. As was common for warships of the period, she was fitted with a ram bow.

The ship's crew consisted of ten officers and 122 enlisted men. She carried a number of smaller boats, including two pinnaces, two cutters, and one dinghy. was not a particularly successful design; she suffered from severe, fast rolling, especially in heavier seas. She also shipped a great deal of water over the bow and was unbalanced in steering. The ship turned rapidly to starboard but was sluggish in turning to port. The ship was required to have the rudder at 15 degrees to port in order to remain on a straight course. It was also impossible to control the ship with only sail power.

The ship was powered by a single two-cylinder single-expansion steam engine built by J. Penn & Sons, Greenwich. The engine drove a single two-bladed screw propeller that was in diameter. Four coal fired, transverse trunk boilers, each of which had four fireboxes apiece, supplied steam to the engine. The boilers were also built by J Penn & Sons, Greenwich, and were arranged in a single boiler room. Limited electrical power was provided by a single generator, which supplied 1.9 kilowatts at 55 volts. The ship was equipped with a schooner rig with a surface area of 540 square meters. The propulsion system was rated at and a top speed of , though on trials, reached and . The ship carried of coal, which enabled a range of at a cruising speed of .

Armament and armor

As built, was equipped with a main battery of four rifled, bronze 72-pounder cannon, but after delivery to the Prussian Navy they were replaced with four Krupp 21 cm RK L/19 of caliber. These guns were supplied with a total of 332 rounds, and could elevate to 12 degrees. At maximum elevation, the guns could engage targets out to . After 1881, four machine guns were installed, along with a single torpedo tube mounted in the bow above the waterline.

s armor consisted of wrought iron backed with teak plating. The conning tower was protected by of wrought iron on of teak. The armored belt ranged in thickness from of iron on the bow and stern to 114 mm amidships, the entire length of which was backed by 229 mm of teak. The two turrets were armored with 114 mm of iron on of timber.

Service history

Construction

She was built by the Samuda Brothers shipyard in London as a speculative project, possibly to sell to the Confederate Navy. The ship was laid down in 1863 and was launched on 20 August 1864. Prussia instead purchased the ship on 20 August 1864 for some 1,887,000 gold marks, paid in part through public donations. The Prussians had hoped to secure the vessel by September, but delivery was delayed by the British government over the Second Schleswig War between Prussia and Denmark. As the British were sympathetic to Denmark, they prevented the ship from being delivered until after the war was concluded.

At her launching, she was christened for the victor of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest against the Romans in 9  CE; the name was chosen to evoke the common feeling of German unity at the time. Commissioning of the ship was delayed after the Prussian naval command decided to use the men who had been allocated to to commission the new screw corvette instead. This decision was in part made due to heavy ice in the Kieler Förde, which prevented from entering the port until 4 April 1865. arrived in London on 20 April with a second crew for , allowing her to be commissioned two days later.

After entering service, the ship conducted initial sea trials, though her armament had not yet been fitted. On 3 May, she and departed Britain. The two ships steamed across the North Sea, and after encountering severe storms, stopped at Skagen, Denmark, for shelter. They later stopped in Helsingør, Denmark, before arriving in Kiel on 15 May. She got underway on 1 June and steamed to Danzig, where she was decommissioned to have her guns installed. Along with the ironclad ram , was the first armored warship acquired by the Prussian Navy.

Austro-Prussian War

She was reactivated in May 1866 under the command of (''KK''—Corvette Captain) Reinhold von Werner, initially to have work done on her gun turrets, but this was delayed as tensions between Austria and Prussia increased. received her mobilization order on 12 May, instructing her to depart for Kiel, which was at that time under Austrian control. The Prussians hoped that her presence would intimidate the Austrian commander, Lieutenant Field Marshal Ludwig von Gablenz. She arrived there on 1 June and anchored off the city's coastal fortifications five days later. The next day, was assigned to a squadron commanded by (Rear Admiral) Eduard von Jachmann, which also included his flagship, the screw frigate . joined a flotilla of ships that was also being transferred from the Baltic Sea to join Jachmann's squadron in the North Sea; these included the aviso and the gunboats , , and . Werner was placed in command of the unit and given the title of (Commodore). The ships got underway on 12 June and passed through the Danish straits, the Skagerrak, and into the North Sea.

The ships arrived in Hamburg, having covered a distance of some in 100 hours, an impressive feat for an early ironclad warship. As the war had not yet started, the ships were first ordered to observe the movements of the Austrian Kalik Brigade in Holstein; the Prussians had learned from the Austrian military attache in Berlin that the unit had orders to retreat to Hannoverian territory, namely Wilhelmsburg and Harburg, in the event of war. Unrest broke out in Altona, prompting Werner to send a landing party of one officer and forty men ashore to secure the rail facility in the town. The Austro-Prussian War began on 14 June, and hostilities with Hannover began the following day. Without a naval threat from Austria, the Prussian navy therefore concentrated its effort against the Kingdom of Hanover. For the remainder of the conflict, operated out of Geestemünde, under Werner's command, and the mere appearance of caused several Hanoverian coastal batteries to surrender. On 15 June, , , and , covered the crossing of the Elbe river by General Edwin von Manteuffel and some 13,500 soldiers to attack the city of Hanover. The crossing took place in the span of ten hours, and Werner's flotilla later covered the crossing of additional forces to support Manteuffel, including cavalry and artillery units.

, , and sent men ashore at Brunshausen, where they spiked the guns of an abandoned coastal artillery battery. Werner then detached and to bombard the batteries at the mouth of the Elbe, while was sent to attack the battery at Grauerort. entered the Elbe on 17 June, but heavy storms prevented her from intercepting a Norddeutscher Lloyd steamship that was carrying the Hannoverian gold reserves to Britain. The Prussian army, supported by Werner's flotilla, had succeeded in capturing all of the major fortifications guarding the Elbe, Weser, and Ems by 22 June, and other naval forces from the Baltic and Mediterranean Sea had arrived to further strengthen the Prussian fleet. and the other vessels thereafter patrolled the coast of Ostfriesland to show the flag