page_title: List of ironclad warships of Germany
section_title: SMS Arminius
hierarchical_section_title: List of ironclad warships of Germany / Ships / SMS Arminius
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Norddeutsches Panzerschiff SMS ARMINIUS im Gefecht mit französischen Panzerschiffen vor der Wesermündung 24. August 1870. Zeitgenössische Darstellung
context_page_description: Between the mid-1860s and the early 1880s, the Prussian and later Imperial German Navies purchased or built sixteen ironclad warships. In 1860, however, the Prussian Navy consisted solely of wooden, unarmored warships. The following year, Prince Adalbert and Albrecht von Roon wrote an expanded fleet plan that included four large ironclads and four smaller ironclads. Two of the latter were to be ordered from Britain immediately, as German shipyards were at the time incapable of building such vessels. The rival Danish fleet had three ironclads in service by the time the Second Schleswig War broke out in 1864; as a result, Prussia purchased the ironclads Arminius and Prinz Adalbert, then under construction in Britain and France, respectively. The British, sympathetic to the Danish cause, delayed delivery of both Arminius and Prinz Adalbert until after the combined Austro-Prussian victory. Both ships entered service by 1865.
  The Prussian Navy had acquired three more ships—Friedrich Carl, Kronprinz, and König Wilhelm—by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. A fourth was ordered from Prussian shipbuilders, but would not be completed in time to see service during the war.
context_section_description: Arminius was an ironclad warship of the Prussian Navy, later the Imperial German Navy. The ship was designed by the British Captain Cowper Coles and built by the Samuda Brothers shipyard in London as a speculative effort; Prussia purchased the ship during the Second Schleswig War against Denmark, though the vessel was not delivered until after the war. The ship was the first German turret ship, armed with four 21 cm (8.3 in) guns in a pair of revolving gun turrets amidships.
  Arminius served as a coastal defense ship for the first six years of her service with the Prussian Navy. She saw extensive service in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars during the process of German unification. The vessel was the primary challenge to the French blockade of German ports during the latter conflict. After the wars, Arminius was withdrawn from front-line service and used in a variety of secondary roles, including as a training ship for engine-room crews and as a tender for the school ship Blücher. The ship was eventually sold in 1901 and broken up for scrap the following year.
caption: Illustration of SMS Arminius engaging French warships during the Franco-Prussian War
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