SMS Wolf was a steam gunboat of the Jäger class built for the Prussian Navy in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The ship was ordered as part of a program to strengthen Prussia's coastal defense forces, then oriented against neighboring Denmark. She was armed with a battery of three guns. The ship saw very little activity during her career. She was activated during the three wars of German unification: the Second Schleswig War against Denmark in 1864. the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. She participated in a minor skirmish against Danish forces in the first conflict, and then took part in operations against the Kingdom of Hanover during the Austro-Prussian War. She saw no action during the war with France. Wolf remained in service until mid-1873; she was struck from the naval register in 1875, used as a storage hulk for nearly a decade, before being sunk as a target ship for torpedo tests in 1884. The wreck was then raised and scrapped.
The Jäger class of gunboats came about as a result of a program to strengthen the Prussian Navy in the late 1850s in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Reichsflotte and in the midst of rising tensions with Denmark. In 1859, Prince Regent Wilhelm approved a construction program for some fifty-two gunboats to be built over the next fifteen years, which began with the fifteen vessels of the Jäger class.[1]
Wolf was 41.2 meters (135 ft 2 in) long overall, with a beam of 6.69 m (21 ft 11 in) and a draft of 2.2 m (7 ft 3 in). She displaced 237 metric tons (233 long tons) normally and 283 t (279 long tons) at full load. The ship's crew consisted of 2 officers and 38 enlisted men. She was powered by a pair of marine steam engines that drove one 3-bladed screw propeller, with steam provided by four coal-fired trunk boilers, which gave her a top speed of 9.1 knots (16.9 km/h; 10.5 mph) at 220 metric horsepower (220 ihp). As built, she was equipped with a three-mastedschooner rig, which was later removed. The ship was armed with a battery of one rifled 24-pounder muzzle-loading gun and two rifled 12-pounder muzzle-loading guns.[2][3]
Service history
Wolf was built at the Liegnitz shipyard in Grabow. Her keel was laid down in 1859 and she was launched on 29 April 1860.[4] The ship, which was named for the eponymous predator, was not commissioned upon completion, and she was instead towed to Stralsund, where she was laid up on the nearby island of Dänholm.[5] While out of service, her copper sheathing was removed from her hull so ventilation holes could be cut into the outer planking. Her entire propulsion system, including the masts and the funnel, was removed and a roof was erected over the hull to keep the elements out.[6]
Wolf was first commissioned on 21 February 1864 after the start of the Second Schleswig War against Denmark. She was assigned to III Flotilla Division.[5] III and V Divisions were based in Stralsund to defend the Kubitzer Bodden and the Bay of Greifswald. In the aftermath of the Battle of Jasmund in mid-March, Prince Adalbert, the Prussian naval commander, ordered all five gunboat divisions to concentrate at Stralsund on 29 March to support the Prussian Army's invasion of the island of Als, but bad weather prevented the vessels from taking part in the operation. Following a ceasefire in May, the Prussian fleet held a naval review in Swinemünde for King Wilhelm I on 6 June; the avisoLoreley led the gunboat divisions during the review.[7] Also in May, the ship was temporarily commanded by Fahnrich zur See (Ensign) Friedrich von Hollmann. The ceasefire did not hold, and Wolf participated in a battle with Danish naval forces off Hiddensee on 3 July. On 23 September, Wolf was decommissioned and placed back in reserve at Dänholm.[5]
The ship returned to service on 3 April 1866 to carry out surveys of Prussia's North Sea coast, initially under the command of Unterleutnant zur See (ULzS–Sub-lieutenant at Sea) Conrad Dietert, but later in May, he was replaced by Leutnant zur SeeOtto Zembsch. She departed Kiel in company with Loreley on 22 April, bound for the Jade Bight. The outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War in June interrupted the survey work, and Wolf was assigned to a flotilla led by the ironcladArminius.[5] The unit also included several other vessels, including Loreley and the gunboats Tiger and Cyclop; the ships had assembled at Hamburg in early June, shortly before the start of the war on 14 June. The following day, the Kingdom of Hannover entered the war against Prussia, and because the Austrian fleet was confined to the Adriatic Sea, the Prussian navy concentrated its effort against the Hannoverians. During these operations, Wolf and Tiger bombarded Hannoverian coastal artillery at the mouth of the Elbe.[8][9] On 24 June, Wolf towed four barges loaded with captured Hannoverian rifles and ammunition to Altona. After operations against Hannover ended, the ship returned to survey work, which lasted until her decommissioning on 10 November in Geestemünde.[5]
Wolf next recommissioned on 24 April 1867 for further survey work, this time in company with Loreley and the gunboat Basilisk. She was decommissioned for the winter on 26 October, and she returned to service the following year on 21 April. But in 1868, budget conflicts between the navy and the Landtag caused a shortage of funds that necessitated the decommissioning of Wolf already on 6 May. Shortages of crewmen kept the ship out of service at Geestemünde in 1869. Wolf finally returned to service on 1 June 1870 to replace the ironclad Prinz Adalbert as the station ship in Altona, but the start of the Franco-Prussian War the following month saw her transferred to guard the entrance to Jade Bay. In September, ULzS Franz Strauch took command of the ship. In May 1871, with the war over, Wolf returned to survey duty in the North Sea, which lasted until her decommissioning on 19 June. The ship was reactivated in August 1872 to serve as a tender for the artillery training shipRenown. On 11 December, she sailed to Kiel, but icy conditions prevented her from reaching the port, and she had to turn back to Wilhelmshaven, where she was decommissioned on 31 December. Wolf was briefly recommissioned in April 1873 to sail through the Eider Canal to Kiel, where she was decommissioned again on 2 May. She was struck from the naval register on 26 September 1875, converted into a naval mine storage hulk, and was renamed MinenprahmNr. 2 (Mine Barge No. 2). The vessel was eventually sunk as a target ship by the torpedo testing ship Blücher during tests outside Kiel on 4 August 1884. Her wreck was later raised and broken up.[10]
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Hildebrand, Hans H.; Röhr, Albert & Steinmetz, Hans-Otto (1993). Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe: Biographien – ein Spiegel der Marinegeschichte von 1815 bis zur Gegenwart [The German Warships: Biographies − A Reflection of Naval History from 1815 to the Present] (in German). Vol. 1. Ratingen: Mundus Verlag. ISBN978-3-7822-0237-4.
Hildebrand, Hans H.; Röhr, Albert & Steinmetz, Hans-Otto (1993). Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe: Biographien – ein Spiegel der Marinegeschichte von 1815 bis zur Gegenwart [The German Warships: Biographies − A Reflection of Naval History from 1815 to the Present] (in German). Vol. 5. Ratingen: Mundus Verlag. ISBN978-3-7822-0456-9.
Hildebrand, Hans H.; Röhr, Albert & Steinmetz, Hans-Otto (1993). Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe: Biographien – ein Spiegel der Marinegeschichte von 1815 bis zur Gegenwart [The German Warships: Biographies − A Reflection of Naval History from 1815 to the Present] (in German). Vol. 8. Ratingen: Mundus Verlag.
Nottelmann, Dirk (2022). "The Development of the Small Cruiser in the Imperial German Navy Part III: The Gunboats". In Jordan, John (ed.). Warship 2022. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. pp. 63–79. ISBN978-1-4728-4781-2.
Sondhaus, Lawrence (1997). Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea Power Before the Tirpitz Era. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN978-1-55750-745-7.
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