SMS Moltke

SMS Moltke was a Bismarck-class corvette built for the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) in the late 1870s. The ship was named after the Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. She was the fourth member of the class, which included five other vessels. The Bismarck-class corvettes were ordered as part of a major naval construction program in the early 1870s, and she was designed to serve as a fleet scout and on extended tours in Germany's colonial empire. Moltke was laid down in July 1875, launched in October 1877, and was commissioned into the fleet in April 1878. She was armed with a battery of ten 15 cm (5.9 in) guns and had a full ship rig to supplement her steam engine on long cruises abroad.
Moltke went on one major overseas deployment in the 1880s to South America. There, she visited ports in several South American countries in the aftermath of the War of the Pacific and carried the German expedition for the International Polar Year to South Georgia Island. After returning to Germany in 1885, she became a training ship for naval cadets and later apprentice seamen. The ship served in this capacity from 1885 to 1908, during which time her activity consisted...