SMS Schwalbe

SMS Schwalbe was an unprotected cruiser built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), the lead ship of the. She had one sister ship, SMS Sperber.

Design
Schwalbe was 66.9 m long overall and had a beam of 9.36 m and a draft of 4.4 m forward. She displaced 1359 MT at full combat load. Her propulsion system consisted of two horizontal 2-cylinder double-expansion steam engines powered by four coal-fired cylindrical water-tube boilers. These provided a top speed of 13.5 kn and a range of approximately 3290 nmi at 10 kn. To supplement the steam engines, she was fitted with a barquentine rig. Schwalbe had a crew of 9 officers and 108 enlisted men.

The ship was armed with eight 10.5 cm K L/35 guns in single pedestal mounts, supplied with 765 rounds of ammunition in total. They had a range of 8200 m. Four guns were mounted on each broadside. The gun armament was rounded out by five 37 mm revolver cannon.

Service history
The keel for Schwalbe was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Dockyard) in Wilhelmshaven in April 1886. Her completed hull was launched on 16 August 1887; then-Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Alexander von Monts gave the launching speech. She was commissioned for sea trials on 8 May 1888, and they lasted until 8 August. Schwalbe was formally placed into service on 12 November and assigned to the East Africa Station in German East Africa, following requests for reinforcement from Konteradmiral Karl August Deinhard, the local commander of naval forces in the region. She departed Germany eight days later and arrived in Zanzibar on 31 December, and was joined by the aviso SMS Pfeil. The two ships reinforced the old sail corvettes SMS Leipzig (1875) and SMS Sophie.