SMS Sophie

SMS was a member of the of steam corvettes built for the German (Imperial Navy) in the 1880s. Intended for service in the German colonial empire, the ship was designed with a combination of steam and sail power for extended range, and was equipped with a battery of ten guns. was laid down at the (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig in 1880, she was launched in November 1881, and she was completed in August 1882.

was sent abroad in 1883, first to escort Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm on a visit to Spain. She then went to western Africa to protect German nationals in Togo before Germany had declared a protectorate in the country. The ship then returned home and was tasked with training duties; during exercises in September 1884, she was rammed and badly damaged by a steam ship. She returned to service after lengthy repairs, and in 1885 and 1886, went on extended training cruises, the first to the West Indies and the second to Spain.

While on the second cruise, she was ordered to join the cruise squadron Germany maintained to respond to crises around the world. She patrolled German colonial holdings in German East Africa and German New Guinea from 1886 to 1892. In June 1892, she was recalled to Germany and decommissioned. returned to training ship duties in January 1898, but this lasted for only a year before she was withdrawn in March 1899. She ended her career as a barracks ship, ultimately being sold in 1920 and broken up the following year.

Design

The six ships of the class were ordered in the late 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.

was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced at full load. The ship's crew consisted of 13 officers and 285 enlisted men. She was powered by a single marine steam engine that drove one 2-bladed screw propeller, with steam provided by six coal-fired fire-tube boilers, which gave her a top speed of at . She had a cruising radius of at a speed of . was equipped with a three-masted barque rig to supplement her steam engines on extended overseas deployments.

was armed with a battery of ten 22- caliber (cal.) breech-loading guns and two 24-cal. guns. She also carried six Hotchkiss revolver cannon. Later in her career, the 8.7 cm guns were replaced with a pair of SK L/30 guns and she received ten small-caliber machine cannon of unrecorded type.

Service history

was ordered under the contract name "F" in 1879, to designate a new addition to the fleet. Her keel was laid down at the (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig in January 1880. The completed hull was launched on 10 November 1881 and (''KAdm''—Rear Admiral) Otto Livonius gave the launching speech. She was named for Sophie, Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. After completing fitting-out work, began sea trials on 10 August 1882. On 26 August, she was transferred to Kiel for further trials, which lasted until 15 November. During this period, she took part in training exercises in September with the practice squadron. On 18 December, the ship was decommissioned in Wilhelmshaven.

First overseas deployment

The ship remained laid up until 2 October 1883, when she was reactivated for a deployment abroad. At the time, General Leo von Caprivi, the head of the Imperial Admiralty, 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. left Wilhelmshaven on 14 October in company with the corvette , bound for the Mediterranean Sea. They reached Genoa, Italy on 27 October, where they met the aviso . There, Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm boarded , and the three ships left for Spain. While en route, lost her jib-boom in a storm and had to take under tow.

After concluding Friedrich Wilhelm's visit to Spain, the three ships took him back to Genoa. was then ordered to East Asia, but before she left Italy, her orders were changed to West Africa. She exited the Mediterranean on 30 December, bound for what was to become the protectorate of Togoland, where significant opposition to German commercial activities was occurring. A German merchant ship had become stranded in the area, and locals had murdered the crew and plundered the ship. German trading stations in the country had also been attacked. While en route, stopped at the ruins of Groß Friedrichsburg, the capital of the old Brandenburger Gold Coast, which had been founded in the 1680s. The ship's captain and a landing party went ashore to make sketches of the fortress ruins; they located six old guns, one of which was taken aboard and later returned to Germany for display. The captain, Wilhelm Steubenrauch, was under orders to avoid any aggressive action, and to merely show the flag