SMS Donau (1893)

Donau was built at the Pola Navy Yard, with her keel laid in October 1888. The ship was ostensibly a reconstruction of the earlier corvette Donau, but this was a legal fiction to conceal the construction of a new warship not authorized by parliament. The older ship was broken up, and only some components were reused in the new ship. She was launched on 18 June 1893, and she was completed in August 1894.^[1] In 1896, Donau embarked Archduke Franz Ferdinand for a convalescent cruise to Egypt; at the time, the ship's captain was Leodegar Kneissler, who would go on to serve as the deputy commander of the Austro-Hungarian Navy under Rudolf Montecuccoli.^[2]

In 1900, Donau embarked on a circumnavigation of the globe with the graduating class of naval cadets from the naval academy. For the first half of the cruise, she was commanded by Captain Anton Haus. After arriving in Chinese waters in the spring of 1901, Haus transferred to the armored cruiser Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia and Donau continued on.^[3] She arrived home later that year, having completed the seventh circumnavigation of a ship of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. It was also the last time an Austro-Hungarian fully rigged ship made an overseas cruise.^[4]

Donau was decommissioned in 1902.^[5] She was disarmed in 1906 and converted into a barracks ship and a stationary training ship for naval cadets, based at the Sebenico Naval School in Sebenico. She remained in the fleet's inventory through World War I, and was ceded to the new Royal Yugoslav Navy in 1920, where she was renamed Sibenik.^[1][6]

• Greger, René (1976). Austro-Hungarian Warships of World War I. London: Ian Allan. ISBN 978-0-7110-0623-2.
• Sieche, Erwin & Bilzer, Ferdinand (1979). "Austria-Hungary". In Gardiner, Robert; Chesneau, Roger & Kolesnik, Eugene M. (eds.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. London: Conway Maritime Press. pp. 266–283. ISBN 978-0-85177-133-5.
• Sondhaus, Lawrence (1994). The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1867–1918. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-034-9.