SMS Hansa (1872)

Hansa was laid down at the Königliche Werft (Royal Dockyard) in Danzig on 16 November 1868.^[7] She was the first ironclad warship to be built in a German shipyard; her predecessors had all been built in French and British shipyards.^[8] Work on the vessel was slowed, in part due to the lengthy process required to properly dry the wood used to construct her hull, but also because of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The ship was launched on 26 October 1872, and General Hermann von Tresckow, the commander of IX Corps, gave the speech at the launching ceremony. This was the first such speech given at a launch ceremony of a Prussian or German warship. She was then towed to the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin for fitting out work on 19 August 1873. This was completed in December 1874, and the ship was then towed to Swinemünde.^[7]

From there, she was to sail to Kiel under the command of Kapitän zur See (KzS—Captain at Sea) Adolph Berger, the director of the naval artillery depot in Kiel, though without having been commissioned. On 16 December, while attempting to leave Swinemünde, the ship ran aground and had to return to port. She was not damaged, but she was escorted by the transport ship SS Eider for the voyage out to sea on 31 December. After arriving in Kiel on 3 January 1875, she was taken into a floating dry dock for final fitting-out on 24 February.^[7] Hansa was finally commissioned into the German fleet on 19 May, two and a half years after her launch. By comparison, all of the earlier foreign-built ironclads were completed in less than a year after their launching; the delays between launching and completion with Hansa were largely the result of the inexperience of the shipyards with building ironclad warships.^[9][10]

Through the 1870s, the German armored fleet typically saw active service during the summer months. Over the winter, most of the vessels were placed in reserve with one or two kept in a state of reduced commission as guard ships. Hansa joined the summer Training Squadron for 1875 on 3 June; the unit also included the ironclads Kronprinz, König Wilhelm, and Kaiser. The ships remained in German waters and included a cruise to Rügen in early July with Crown Prince Frederick aboard one of the vessels. The ships then took part in training exercises in Danzig Bay and were visited by Stosch. At the end of the training cycle, the fleet held a naval review for Kaiser Wilhelm I on 22–23 September. The next day, the Training Squadron was disbanded and Hansa was decommissioned on 4 November.^[7][11]

She remained out of commission until 22 July 1878, when she returned to service for a deployment to the West Indies later that year. Upon recommissioning that day, she was placed under the command of Korvettenkapitän (KK—Corvette Captain) Karl Eduard Heusner. She was initially placed in the first category of reserve on 21 August, before preparations for the voyage began on 1 October. She departed Kiel on 31 October and arrived in the area in Charlotte Amalie in the Danish West Indies on 3 January 1879. After arriving there, she received orders to sail to Venezuela, where domestic unrest threatened Europeans living in the country. There, she met the German steam corvette Nymphe in La Guaira. The two ships acted to protect German nationals in Puerto Cabello, and also came to the aid of United States citizens in La Guaira. While in the latter port, Hansa's engines broke down after weighing anchor; she only avoided colliding with other ships in the harbor by the crew's skillful seamanship and quickly transitioning to sail power. Nymphe left the area on 28 January but Hansa remained off Venezuela until 20 February, by which time it had become apparent that the unrest was nearing its end.^[12]

After leaving Venezuelan waters, Hansa sailed for Curaçao in the Lesser Antilles, where she remained until the end of March. She thereafter toured ports in the Greater Antilles, visited Greytown, Nicaragua, Colón in what was then still Colombia, and Saint Thomas in the Danish West Indies. From Saint Thomas, she departed to make the voyage south to visit South America's east coast. Along the way, she stopped in Bahia from 22 to 30 June, and while there, she received orders to sail to the west coast of the continent. By that time, the War of the Pacific between Peru, Chile, and Bolivia had broken out, which threatened the security of Germans and other foreign nationals in the country. She passed through Montevideo, Uruguay, from 1 to 13 July and arrived in Valparaiso, Chile, on 19 August. From there, she continued on to Callao, Peru. By that time, the Peruvian government had seized the German steamer SS Luxor of the Kosmos Reederei company for carrying contraband, and processed the seizure through a prize court. Following Hansa's arrival, she received the steamer's crew, who had been sheltering aboard a British gunboat. But the Germans were unable to secure the vessel's release, so on 8 September Hansa left the port.^[b] Heusner was under strict orders to remain neutral while in the region, and he lacked the necessary force to take direct action in any event.^[c] Meanwhile, the German naval command commissioned the steam corvette Freya and the gunboat Hyäne to reinforce Hansa.^[13]

Following the Chilean victory in the Battle of Angamos on 8 October, the Chilean Navy planned to bombard Callao, which had been declared an open city. Heusner protested the planned attack, which led the Chilean government to cancel it.^[13] Hansa cruised off the Peruvian and Chilean coast through June 1880,^[11] and throughout this period, she repeatedly sent landing parties ashore in Callao, Lima, and Arica to protect Germans in those cities. Hyäne arrived in Valparaiso on 1 February 1880 and Freya joined the German ships there on 3 March. The war soon turned decisively in Chile's favor, which permitted the Germans to recall Hyäne on 3 April, followed quickly by Freya on 14 April. The steam corvette Bismarck arrived in the area on 26 May, the same day that Chile defeated Bolivia in the Battle of Tacna, knocking the latter out of the war. Bismarck operated with Hansa until July, when the latter vessel began the voyage home. In mid-August, the steam corvette Ariadne met Hansa in Coronel, Chile, where they officially transferred responsibility for the region on 11 August. Hansa thereafter departed for Germany, eventually arriving back in Kiel on 22 October. There, she was decommissioned on 8 November.^[16]

After being decommissioned, the ship underwent an overhaul and then remained out of service until February 1884.^[17] During this period, the navy considered activating the ship to send her to the eastern Mediterranean during the Anglo-Egyptian War, but the plan came to nothing. She was recommissioned again on 22 February 1884 to serve as the guard ship in Kiel, and as a training ship for boiler and engine room crews. The ship carried out several short training crews during this period, and on 28–29 June, she embarked Prince Wilhelm and Prince Heinrich, the kaiser's grandsons for a cruise with the Ironclad Training Squadron. After steaming back to Kiel on 10 August, she resumed short training cruises. On 14 October, she went to assist the stranded corvette Gneisenau, which had run aground off Lolland. That month, KzS Conrad Dietert became the ship's commander. Hansa took part in the fleet's training activities in the Baltic and North Seas for 1885 and 1886.^[18] In 1885, she served with the ironclad Friedrich Carl and the new ironclad Bayern, but in 1886, she was transferred to II Division, along with four screw corvettes.^[19] The ship joined the Ironclad Squadron on 7 June 1887 for ceremonies marking the beginning of construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, after which she conducted shooting practice and training cruises.^[20]

By early 1888, it was found that her hull was badly corroded;^[4][18] this stemmed from the lengthy construction period, during which the iron had already begun to corrode.^[5] She was formally stricken from the naval register on 6 August 1888, by which time her hull had deteriorated further and she was no longer capable of going to sea. She was then converted for use as a floating barracks for the II Torpedo Division in Kiel, which included installing central heating and electrical lights. She filled this role until 1905. Hansa was then moved to Mönkeberg, hulked, and used to train boiler stokers. The ship did not last long in this service, and was sold in March 1906 for 96,000 marks. Hansa was broken up later that year in Swinemünde.^[4][18][17]

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