 Cormoran was based in Tsingtao with unusable engines; she was scuttled in the harbor since she was no longer operational. Geier briefly operated against British shipping in the Pacific before having to put into Hawaii for internment by the then-neutral United States. After the United States entered the war in April 1917, she was seized and commissioned into the US Navy as USS Schurz; she served as an escort until she was accidentally sunk following a collision with a freighter in June 1918. Seeadler and Condor, meanwhile, had been converted into mine storage hulks after the start of the war. Seeadler was destroyed by an accidental explosion in 1917. Condor was the only member of the class to survive the war, and she was scrapped in 1921.
