SMS Cormoran

SMS ("His Majesty's Ship Cormorant") was an unprotected cruiser of the , the fifth member of a class of six ships. She was built for the Imperial German Navy for overseas duty. The cruiser's keel was laid down in Danzig in 1890; she was launched in May 1892 and commissioned in July 1893. was armed with a main battery of eight guns, and could steam at a speed of . spent the majority of her career abroad, usually in Germany's South Pacific colonies in the Samoan Islands. Her duties there typically consisted of survey work and suppressing colonial unrest. She briefly cruised in South African waters in late 1894 and early 1895 before steaming to the Pacific. She participated in the seizure of the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory in the Shandong Peninsula in China in 1897. returned to Germany in 1903 and was modernized in 1907–08. The following year, she returned to the South Pacific, where she remained until the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. Docked in Tsingtau for repairs at the onset of hostilities, she was unable to actively take part in the fighting. She was therefore disarmed and scuttled in the harbor; her guns were used to strengthen the defenses of the port. Description Through the 1870s and early 1880s, Germany built two types of cruising vessels: small, fast avisos suitable for service as fleet scouts and larger, long-ranged screw corvettes capable of patrolling the German colonial empire. A pair of new cruisers was authorized under the 1886–1887 fiscal year, intended for the latter purpose. General Leo von Caprivi, the Chief of the Imperial Admiralty, sought to modernize Germany's cruiser force. The first step in the program, the two unprotected cruisers, provided the basis for the larger .