SMS Drache (1865)
Illustration of Drache's sister ship Meteor | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name | Drache |
| Operator | |
| Builder | Königliche Werft, Danzig |
| Laid down | 27 July 1861 |
| Launched | 3 August 1865 |
| Commissioned | July 1870 |
| Decommissioned | 30 September 1887 |
| Stricken | 13 December 1887 |
| Fate | Sunk in torpedo tests, 1889 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class & type | Camäleon-class gunboat |
| Displacement | 422 t (415 long tons) |
| Length | 43.28 m (142 ft) |
| Beam | 6.96 m (22 ft 10 in) |
| Draft | 2.67 m (8 ft 9 in) |
| Installed power | 250 to 320 PS (250 to 320 ihp) |
| Propulsion | 1 × marine steam engine |
| Speed | 9.1 to 9.3 kn (16.9 to 17.2 km/h; 10.5 to 10.7 mph) |
| Complement | 71 |
| Armament |
|
SMS Drache was a Camäleon-class steam gunboat of the Prussian Navy (later the Imperial German Navy) that was launched in 1860. Drache was a small vessel, armed with a battery of only three guns. The ship was ordered as part of a program to strengthen Prussia's coastal defense forces, then oriented against neighboring Denmark. Budgetary problems delayed her completion until 1869, and she first entered service during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, though she saw no significant action against the French Navy. Drache spent most of her career, between 1872 and 1887, conducting survey work in the North Sea, which later proved to be instrumental to the operations of German U-boats and minelayers during World War I. Drache was ultimately decommissioned in 1887, reduced to a coal hulk, and then expended as a target for the torpedo boat D5 in 1889. Her wreck was later raised and broken up.