SMS Salamander (1880). SMS Salamander was an ironclad gunboat of the  built for the German  (Imperial Navy) in the 1870s. The ships, which were armed with a single  MRK L/22 gun, were intended to serve as part of a coastal defense fleet.

Design

Development of the  of ironclad gunboats began in the 1850s, after the first ironclads were introduced during the Crimean War. Through the 1860s, the Federal Convention examined various proposals, which included plans to build at least eight vessels, to as many as eighteen armored warships. The decision was finalized based on the fleet plan conceived by General Albrecht von Stosch, the new Chief of the  (Imperial Admiralty), in the early 1870s. He envisioned a fleet oriented on defense of Germany's Baltic and North Sea coasts, which would be led by the ironclad corvettes of the . These were to be supported by larger numbers of small, armored gunboats, which became the Wespe class.

Salamander was  long overall, with a beam of  and a draft of . She displaced  as designed and  at full load. The ship's crew consisted of 3 officers and 73 to 85 enlisted men. She was powered by a pair of double-expansion steam engines that drove a pair of 4-bladed screw propellers, with steam provided by four coal-fired cylindrical fire-tube boilers, which gave her a top speed of  at . At a cruising speed of , she could steam for .

The ship was armed with one  MRK L/22 gun in a barbette mount that had a limited arc of traverse. In practice, the gun was aimed by turning the ship in the direction of fire. The Wespes were intended to beach themselves on the sandbars along the German coastline to serve as semi-mobile coastal artillery batteries. The armored barbette was protected by  of wrought iron, backed with  of teak. The ship was fitted with a waterline armor belt that was  thick, with the thickest section protecting the propulsion machinery spaces and ammunition magazine. The belt was backed with 210 mm of teak. An armor deck that consisted of two layers of  of iron on  of teak provided additional protection against enemy fire.

Service history

The keel for Salamander was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen in September 1878, and she was launched on 6 January 1880. The supervisor of the shipyard gave a speech at the launching ceremony, where the ship was named after the 1850s aviso . Work on the ship was completed later that year on 11 October, but she was not commissioned to begin sea trials until 4 September 1883. These tests only lasted for five days, after which she returned to the reserve fleet. By 1883, the ship had been refitted with an additional  L/24 built-up guns, a pair of  Hotchkiss revolver cannon, and two  torpedo tubes in her bow, both of which were below the waterline.

The ship's first period in service began on 20 August 1885, when she was commissioned for training exercises conducted in company with her sisters , , and . They were organized into a division for exercises with the rest of the German fleet, which lasted until 14 September. She was decommissioned again that day, and thereafter served as an auxiliary ship in the Reserve Division of the North Sea. She was recommissioned on 11 May 1886 for another brief period of training with some of her sisters, which lasted until 9 June. Salamander was next recommissioned on 16 August 1887, and she joined the Ironclad Squadron for training exercises that lasted until 14 September. The year 1888 followed the same pattern; the maneuvers that year lasted from 15 August to 15 September, and included a simulated attack on the North Sea naval base at Wilhelmshaven, where Salamander served in the defending force.

Salamander was recommissioned again on 13 August 1889, under the command of  (Captain Lieutenant) Friedrich Vüllers. Training maneuvers that year lasted until 11 September, after which the ship was again decommissioned, though the Reserve Division was disbanded at that time. The ship returned to active service from 13 August to 20 September 1890 for the annual fleet maneuvers. Her last period in active service began on 4 August 1891 and lasted until 22 September, when she was decommissioned for the last time. Salamander was struck from the naval register on 28 June 1909 and sold to a firm in Düsseldorf the following year. While under tow in November, she ran aground off Castricum, Netherlands, in a storm and could not be freed. The wreck remained there for decades, and her superstructure was eventually scrapped in situ in 1936. An attempt to raise the wreck in 1938 failed, as did one in 1980. The hull remained there and eventually became buried in silt.

Notes

References
 
 
 
 
 
 

Wespe-class gunboats
1880 ships
Ships built in Bremen (state)