The naval Battle of Jasmund took place between elements of the Danish and Prussian navies on 17 March 1864 during the Second Schleswig War. The action took place east of the Jasmund peninsula on the Prussian island of Rügen, during a Prussian attempt to weaken the Danish blockade in the Baltic Sea. The Prussian squadron, commanded by Eduard von Jachmann, sortied with a screw frigate, a screw corvette, a paddle steamer, and six gunboats to attack the Danish squadron blockading the eastern Prussian coast. The Danish force was commanded by Edvard van Dockum, and it consisted of one screw frigate, one ship of the line, and two steam corvettes. In an action lasting two hours, the superior Danish squadron forced the Prussians to withdraw, with both sides suffering damage and light casualties. The Danish victory was compounded by the arrival of further warships after the battle, which cemented the blockade. The outcome of the battle, and the naval war in the Baltic as a whole, was irrelevant to the outcome of the war, however, as the Prussian and Austrian armies decisively defeated the Danes on land, forcing them to surrender.
Prince Heinrich Wilhelm Adalbert of Prussia was a son of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Landgravine Marie Anna of Hesse-Homburg. He was a naval theorist and admiral. He was instrumental during the Revolutions of 1848 in founding the first unified German fleet, the Reichsflotte. During the 1850s he helped to establish the Prussian Navy.
Eduard Karl Emanuel von Jachmann was the first Vizeadmiral of the Prussian Navy. He entered the navy in the 1840s after initially serving in the merchant marine. In 1848, Jachmann received his first command, the corvette SMS Amazone; through the 1850s and early 1860s, he held several other commands, including the frigates Thetis—aboard which he took part in the Eulenburg expedition to East Asia—and Arcona. During the Second Schleswig War in 1864, he commanded Prussian naval forces in the Baltic from Arcona, and led a small squadron at the Battle of Jasmund on 17 March. Though defeated in that battle, he was promoted to Konteradmiral for his aggressive handling of the Prussian fleet.
SMS Prinz Adalbert was an armored cruiser built in the early 1900s for the Imperial German Navy. She was named after Prince Adalbert of Prussia, former Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Navy, and was the lead ship of her class.
SMS Danzig was a paddle corvette of the Prussian Navy. She was the lead warship during the Battle of Tres Forcas in 1856, one of the first examples of Prussian gunboat diplomacy. She was later decommissioned from the Prussian Navy and served in the navy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate as the Kaiten from 1864 until 1869, and then briefly with the breakaway Ezo Republic until her destruction later the same year.
SMS Danzig was a light cruiser of the Imperial German Navy. Named for the city of Danzig, she was the seventh and last ship of the Bremen class. She was begun by the Imperial Dockyard in her namesake city in 1904, launched on 23 September 1905 and commissioned on 1 December 1907. Armed with a main battery of ten 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns and two 45 cm (18 in) torpedo tubes, Danzig was capable of a top speed of 22 knots.
William of Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld, was a German prince of the Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld branch of the House of Hesse, and Konteradmiral of the Prussian and Imperial German Navy.
SMS Meteor was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the North German Federal Navy that was launched in 1865. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Meteor took part in the Battle of Havana in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. There, she battled the French aviso Bouvet; both vessels were lightly damaged, though Bouvet was compelled to disengage after a shot from Meteor disabled her engine. After the war, Meteor returned to Germany, where her career was limited; she served briefly as a survey vessel. From 1873 to 1877, she was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea as a station ship in Constantinople during a period of tensions in the Ottoman Empire. After returning to Germany in 1877, she was decommissioned, converted into a coal hulk and expended as a target ship some time later.
SMS Blitz was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy that was launched in 1862. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Blitz served during all three wars of German unification in the 1860s and early 1870s. The ship was present during the Battle of Heligoland in May 1864 during the Second Schleswig War, but was too slow to engage the Danish squadron. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, she operated against the Kingdom of Hanover in the North Sea, but did not see extensive action. In August 1870, Blitz and three other light vessels attacked the French blockade force in the Baltic Sea during the Franco-Prussian War, but they withdrew without either side scoring any hits. During her peacetime career, Blitz was sent to the Mediterranean Sea twice, in 1863 and 1867–1868. She was employed as a fisheries protection ship, a guard ship, and a survey vessel in the early 1870s, before being decommissioned in 1875 and broken up for scrap in 1878. Parts of her machinery were reused in the gunboat Wolf.
SMS Basilisk was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy that was launched in 1862. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Basilisk served during all three wars of German unification in the 1860s and early 1870s. The ship was present during the Battle of Heligoland in May 1864 during the Second Schleswig War, but was too slow to engage the Danish squadron. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, Basilisk was stationed in the North Sea to help defend the coast, but she did not see action during either conflict. Between 1873 and 1875, she was employed experimentally as the first torpedo-armed warship of the German fleet. Basilisk was decommissioned in 1875, renamed "Mine Barge No. 1", and converted into a naval mine storage hulk. The details of her fate are unrecorded, but she was still in service in that capacity at least as late as 1900. Sometime thereafter, she was broken up.
SMS Cyclop was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy that was launched in 1860. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Cyclop served during the three wars of German unification; during the first, the Second Schleswig War on 1864, she guarded the Prussian coastline but saw no action. She supported the army's campaign against the Kingdom of Hanover during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and she defended the Elbe for the duration of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, but again took part in no battles. Badly deteriorated by 1872, she was stricken from the naval register in March that year and reconstructed into an iron-hulled gunboat. Recommissioned in 1875, she thereafter served abroad in the German colonial empire before being stricken again in 1888. She was thereafter used as a storage hulk before ultimately being broken up for scrap after 1914.
SMS Prinz Adalbert was a steam corvette of the German Kaiserliche Marine, the second and final member of the Leipzig class. She was laid down in 1875 at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, was launched in June 1876, and was commissioned into the fleet in August 1877. Originally named Sedan after the Battle of Sedan of the Franco-Prussian War, she was renamed Prinz Adalbert to avoid antagonizing France in 1878, less than a decade after the battle.
The Leipzig class was a group of two screw corvettes built for the German Kaiserliche Marine in the 1870s. The two ships of the class were Leipzig and Prinz Adalbert; Prinz Adalbert was originally named Sedan after the Battle of Sedan, but was renamed shortly after entering service to avoid angering France. They were based on the earlier corvette Freya, but were significantly larger, carried a stronger armament, and unlike the wooden-hulled Ariadne-class corvettes, adopted iron construction, making them the first corvettes of the German fleet to be built with iron. Originally intended to serve abroad and with the fleet, British experiences during the Battle of Pacocha in 1877 convinced the German naval command that unarmored warships were useless against the fleets of ironclads being built by the European navies, and so Leipzig and Prinz Adalbert would be used only on foreign stations.
SMS Nymphe was the lead ship of the Nymphe class of steam corvettes, the first ship of that type to be built for the Prussian Navy. She had one sister ship, Medusa, and the vessels were wooden-hulled ships armed with a battery of sixteen guns. She was ordered as part of a naval expansion program to counter the Danish Navy over the disputed ownership of Schleswig and Holstein. Nymphe was laid down in January 1862, was launched in April 1863, and was completed in October that year.
SMS Preussischer Adler was a paddle steamer originally built in the mid-1840s for use on a packet route between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire in the Baltic Sea. She was requisitioned by the Prussian Navy during the First Schleswig War in 1848 and converted into an aviso, the first vessel of the type commissioned by Prussia. During the war, she took part in an inconclusive action with the Danish brig St. Croix, the first naval battle of the Prussian fleet. After the war, she was disarmed and returned to her commercial role, operating uneventfully on the Stettin–St. Petersburg route until 1862, when the expansion of the Prussian Eastern Railway had rendered the maritime route superfluous. The ship was purchased by the Prussian Navy that year and rearmed, once again as an aviso.
SMS Nix was the lead ship of the two-vessel Nix class of avisos built for the Prussian Navy in the early 1850s. After commissioning in 1851, Nix saw little activity, apart from short training exercises and cruises in the Baltic Sea, which were frequently punctuated with boiler fires. A dissatisfied Prussian Navy decided to sell both Nix-class ships. In 1855, the Prussians sold Nix to the British Royal Navy in exchange for the sail frigate Thetis, and was commissioned as HMS Weser. She saw action during the Crimean War at the Battle of Kinburn in October 1855, and thereafter saw little activity, being based in Malta. She was ultimately decommissioned in 1865, used as a harbor ship, and then sold to ship breakers in 1873.
The Nix class was a pair of avisos built for the Prussian Navy in the early 1850s. The class comprised two ships: SMS Nix and Salamander. They were ordered as part of a modest program to strengthen the fleet at the urging of Prince Adalbert of Prussia in the immediate aftermath of the First Schleswig War, which had demonstrated that the weak fleet could not challenge the ability of Denmark to impose a blockade of Prussian and German ports. They were small vessels with a shallow draft, since they were intended to operate close to shore to defend Prussia's coast. Neither vessel saw significant service in the Prussian Navy before being sold to the British Royal Navy in exchange for the frigate Thetis in 1855. They were renamed Weser and Recruit, respectively, and the former saw action during the Crimean War in the Black Sea later in 1855. The two ships saw little activity after their sale to Britain, with Recruit being laid up in 1861 and Weser following in 1865. Recruit was sold for merchant service in 1870, while Weser was discarded in 1873.
SMS Grille was an aviso of the Prussian Navy built in France in the mid-1850s as part of a naval expansion program directed by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who saw the need for a stronger fleet. She was authorized in 1855 in the aftermath of the First Schleswig War, which had demonstrated the weakness of the Prussian fleet. Grille was the first screw propeller-driven steamship to be built for Prussia; all earlier steam-powered vessels had been paddle steamers.
SMS Loreley was an aviso of the Prussian Navy built in the late 1850s. Built as a paddle steamer, since the Prussian naval command was not convinced of the reliability of screw propellers, she was the first Prussian warship to be fitted with a domestically-produced marine steam engine. The ship carried a light armament of two 12-pound guns and had a top speed of 10.5 knots. Loreley was intended to serve as the flagship of the gunboat flotillas that formed the bulk of the Prussian fleet in the 1850s.
Prussia