SMS Sophie
Sophie sometime between 1882 and 1897
| |
History | |
---|---|
German Empire | |
Name | Sophie |
Namesake | Sophie, Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach |
Laid down | January 1880 |
Launched | 10 November 1881 |
Commissioned | 10 August 1882 |
Decommissioned | 7 April 1899 |
Fate | Scrapped, 1921 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Carola-class corvette |
Displacement | ) |
Length | 76.35 m (250 ft 6 in) |
Beam | 12.5 m (41 ft) |
Draft | 4.98 m (16 ft 4 in) |
Installed power |
|
Propulsion |
|
Speed | 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph) |
Range | 3,420 nautical miles (6,330 km; 3,940 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
Crew |
|
Armament |
|
SMS Sophie was a member of the
Sophie 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. Sophie returned to training ship duties in January 1898, but this lasted for only a year before she was withdrawn in March 1899.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 Carola 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. Sophie and her sister ships were intended to patrol Germany's colonial empire and safeguard German economic interests around the world.[1]
Sophie was 76.35 meters (250 ft 6 in)
Sophie was armed with a
Service history
Sophie was ordered under the contract name "F" in 1879, to designate a new addition to the fleet. Her
First overseas deployment
The ship remained
After concluding Friedrich Wilhelm's visit to Spain, the three ships took him back to Genoa. Sophie was then ordered to
Sophie then proceeded to Klein-Popo, Togo where a local chief had been launching attacks of Germans in the area, and had convinced several other chiefs to join him in his efforts to expel the Germans. Steubenrauch negotiated with the chief and reached a suitable settlement, but similar incidents at Gross-Popo forced Sophie to proceed there on 2 February, though not all of the chiefs had agreed to the settlement. Owing to the gravity of the situation, Steubenrauch ignored his orders to avoid combat, and he sent a landing party of 150 men ashore to protect the German trading post in Klein-Popo and arrest the chiefs who remained hostile, who were taken aboard Sophie before she departed. After reaching Gross-Popo, Sophie encountered a British corvette, which had the governor of the Gold Coast colony board; Steubenrauch negotiated the legality of his actions and the release of the chiefs with the British governor. Steubenrauch then entered into discussions with the chief of Gross-Popo from 5 to 7 February, and they also reached a peaceful solution. Sophie then proceeded to Porto Grande Bay, where Steubenrauch reported his activities. Caprivi commended Steubenrauch for his decisive actions and ordered Sophie to return to Germany for repairs. She arrived back in Wilhelmshaven on 30 March.[6]
Training duties
By May 1884, Sophie was again ready for service, and she was assigned to
Repairs were completed by April 1885, and she was recommissioned on the 9th. In company with the corvette Stein, Sophie began another training cruise on 12 May, which saw the ships visit several ports in Scandinavia. Sophie was assigned to the I Division of the Exercise Squadron from the end of July to 23 September, during which the squadron conducted maneuvers in the North and Baltic Seas. The navy created a training squadron consisting of Sophie and Stein, which served as the flagship. The squadron then began a training cruise, which departed on 13 October, bound for the West Indies. The two ships returned to Wilhelmshaven on 27 March 1886, the squadron was dissolved, and Sophie underwent an overhaul. The training routine for 1886 followed the same pattern as the year before, with Sophie and Stein again assigned to a temporary training squadron, though this year, the ships went to Lisbon, Portugal.[7]
Second tour abroad
While in Lisbon, the navy ordered Sophie to leave Stein and join the cruiser squadron in German East Africa, commanded by Kommodore (Commodore) Karl Eduard Heusner. After exchanging her trainees with trained men from Stein, she departed on 6 November and reached the cruiser squadron in Zanzibar on 14 December. In March 1887, the ships went to Cape Town, and in mid-April, Sophie was detached from the squadron to the Pacific Ocean station. She stopped in Sydney, Australia, where she took part in a celebration of Queen Victoria's 40th year on the British throne. From 19 August to 21 November, she lay off Apia in Samoa, and in December, she began a cruise through the Bismarck Archipelago, part of the German protectorate of German New Guinea. She concluded the cruise in Hong Kong on 6 January 1888, where she underwent an overhaul. While there, her captain died from typhus on 16 March. By this time, the cruiser squadron had joined Sophie in the Pacific, and the ships cruised together in East Asian waters. On 31 May, Sophie stopped in Singapore for more maintenance work, and while there, the squadron received orders to return to East Africa.[8]
After arriving, the squadron flagship, Bismarck, was ordered to return to Germany. As a result, Heusner transferred his flag to Sophie on 9 June. The squadron, which at this time consisted of Sophie and her sisters Carola and Olga, arrived in Zanzibar on 29 June, but two days later, Heusner was also instructed to return home for a new command, so Sophie departed for Aden. She waited there from 28 July to 19 August for the new commander, KAdm Karl August Deinhard to arrive, before proceeding to Manda Bay in German East Africa. She arrived there on 30 August and Deinhard shifted his flag to the corvette Leipzig. The navy had intended to send Sophie to the Pacific, but damage to her engines sustained on the trip back from Aden precluded such a long voyage, so Olga was sent instead. Sophie went to Mikindani, Kenya and then to Lindi in German East Africa before putting a landing party ashore at the mouth of the Kingani river on 27 October. The men returned to their ship the next day, which proceeded to Windi three days later for another landing operation. Deinhard temporarily came aboard Sophie to direct a blockade of the coast from 28 November to 1 December, from the Mafia Channel to Kiswere.[9]
In mid-January 1889, Sophie went to
After her sister Alexandrine arrived on 14 December, Sophie departed for Sydney to repair damage sustained during a cyclone, arriving there on 2 January 1890. On 25 January, with repairs completed, she began a tour of the Bismarck Archipelago, which concluded with a visit to Sir Charles Hardy Island to punish locals who had robbed and murdered a German merchant. In early March, she went to East Asian waters, and while en route, joined the fruitless search for a boat lost near the Jaluit Atoll that had been at sea with two dozen people aboard. Sophie arrived in Hong Kong on 22 March, where she met Leipzig. Sophie went into the drydock for an overhaul that lasted from 23 April to 10 May. On 18 May, she left Hong Kong to cruise along the southern Chinese coast and visit Singapore, at which point she rendezvoused with Leipzig to visit Sydney. There, they were joined by Alexandrine, and the three ships proceeded on together to New Zealand before turning north to Samoa. They arrived in Apia on 19 December, and remained there until early January 1891. Sophie went to the Marshall Islands and then returned to Hong Kong, where she remained from 14 February to 4 March.[10]
After leaving Hong Kong, Sophie visited several other Chinese and Japanese ports. In the meantime, the
Later career
In July 1895, Sophie was slated to become a dedicated training ship. She was transferred to Wilhelmshaven for the conversion work; while the work was underway, she was officially transferred to the list of training ships on 9 April 1897. Work on the ship was completed by 1 January 1898, when she was recommissioned. She thereafter took part in training cruises in the Baltic, and in August she began an extended training cruise abroad that went as far as Montevideo. She returned to Wilhelmshaven from the cruise on 24 March 1899, and she was decommissioned there for a final time on 7 April. The corvette
Notes
- ^ Sondhaus, pp. 116–117, 136–137.
- ^ a b Gröner, p. 90.
- ^ a b Lyon, p. 252.
- ^ a b c d Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz, p. 172.
- ^ Sondhaus, p. 155.
- ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz, pp. 172–173.
- ^ a b Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz, p. 173.
- ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz, pp. 173–174.
- ^ a b Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz, p. 174.
- ^ Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz, pp. 174–175.
- ^ a b Hildebrand, Röhr, & Steinmetz, p. 175.
- ^ Gröner, p. 91.
References
- ISBN 978-0-87021-790-6.
- 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. 7. Ratingen: Mundus Verlag. ISBN 9783782202671.
- Lyon, Hugh (1979). "Germany". In Gardiner, Robert; Chesneau, Roger; Kolesnik, Eugene M. (eds.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. Greenwich: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 978-0-85177-133-5.
- Sondhaus, Lawrence (1997). Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea Power Before the Tirpitz Era. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-745-7.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-1-68247-745-8.
- Nottelmann, Dirk (2022). Wright, Christopher C. (ed.). "From "Wooden Walls" to "New-Testament Ships": The Development of the German Armored Cruiser 1854–1918, Part II: "The Iron-Cruisers"". Warship International. LIX (3): 197–241. ISSN 0043-0374.