SMS Mecklenburg

SMS Mecklenburg ("His Majesty's Ship Mecklenburg") was fifth ship of the of pre-dreadnought battleships of the German Imperial Navy. Laid down in 1899 at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, she was finished in May 1903. Her sisters were SMS Wittelsbach, SMS Zähringen, SMS Wettin, and SMS Schwaben; they were the first capital ships built under the Navy Law of 1898, brought about by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz.

Mecklenburg spent the first period of her active duty career in the I Squadron of the German fleet. After the start of World War I in August 1914, the ship was mobilized with her sisters as the IV Battle Squadron. She saw limited duty in the Baltic Sea against Russian forces, though the threat from British submarines forced the ship to withdraw in 1916. For the remainder of her career, Mecklenburg served as a prison ship and as a barracks ship based in Kiel. The ship was stricken from the navy list in January 1920 and sold for scrapping in the following year

Construction
Mecklenburg's keel was laid in 1899, at the Schichau-Werke in Danzig, under construction number 676. She was ordered under the contract name "D", as a new unit for the fleet. The vessel was a member of the first class of battleships built under the direction of State Secretary Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, according to the terms of the Navy Law of 1898. Mecklenburg was launched on 9 November 1901, the last ship of her class to be launched. Fitting out work proceeded faster on Mecklenburg than on her sister SMS Schwaben, and so the former was commissioned first, on 25 May 1903, a full year before Schwaben. The ship's cost totaled 22,329,000 marks.

The ship was 126.8 m long overall and had a beam of 22.8 m and a draft of 7.95 m forward. The ship was powered by three 3-cylinder vertical triple expansion engines that drove three screws. Steam was provided by six naval and six cylindrical coal-fired boilers. Mecklenburg's powerplant was rated at 14000 ihp, which gave her a top speed of 18 kn.

Mecklenburg's armament consisted of a main battery of four 24 cm (9.4 in) SK L/40 guns in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the central superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of eighteen 15 cm (5.9 inch) SK L/40 guns and twelve 8.8 cm (3.45 in) SK L/30 quick-firing guns. The armament system was rounded out with six 45 cm torpedo tubes, all in above-water swivel mounts.

Service history
Following her commissioning in 1903, Mecklenburg was assigned to the II Division of the I Squadron, alongside the battleships SMS Kaiser Karl der Grosse and SMS Kaiser Wilhelm II. By 1905, the German Navy had been increased to four squadrons of three battleships each, with two squadrons per division. This was supported by a cruiser division, composed of two armored cruisers and six protected cruisers. In 1909, Mecklenburg and the newer battleship SMS Lothringen won the annual Kaiser's Prize for accurate shooting. Mecklenburg had by this time been transferred to the I Division of the I Squadron. The latest s had entered service, which provided enough ships to increase the size of the fleet to four divisions of four vessels each.

After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Mecklenburg and the rest of her class were mobilized to serve in the IV Battle Squadron, under the command of Vice Admiral Ehrhard Schmidt. Starting on 3 September, the IV Squadron, assisted by the armored cruiser SMS Blücher, conducted a sweep into the Baltic. The operation lasted until 9 September and failed to bring Russian naval units to battle. In May 1915, IV Squadron, including Mecklenburg, was transferred to support the German Army in the Baltic Sea area. Mecklenburg and her sisters were then based in Kiel.

On 6 May, the IV Squadron ships were tasked with providing support to the assault on Libau. Mecklenburg and the other ships stood off Gotland in order to intercept any Russian cruisers that might try to intervene in the landings, which the Russians did not attempt. On 10 May, after the invasion force had entered Libau, the British submarines HMS E1 and HMS E9 spotted the IV Squadron, but were too far away to make an attack. Mecklenburg and her sisters were not included in the German fleet that assaulted the Gulf of Riga in August 1915, due to the scarcity of escorts. The increasingly active British submarines forced the Germans to employ more destroyers to protect the capital ships.

By 1916, the increasing threat from British submarines in the Baltic convinced the German navy to withdraw the elderly Wittelsbach-class ships from active service. She and her sisters were subsequently disarmed and used in secondary roles. Mecklenburg was initially based in Kiel and used as a floating prison. In 1918, she became a barracks ship for U-boat crews stationed in Kiel. The ship was briefly retained after the German defeat at the end of World War I, but on 25 January 1920, Mecklenburg was stricken from the naval register. She was sold to Deutsche-Werke, a ship-breaking firm based in Kiel, on 16 August 1921 for 1,750,000 Marks. The ship was broken up for scrap metal that year in Kiel-Nordmole.