SMS Panther

SMS Panther was one of six Iltis-class gunboats of the Kaiserliche Marine and, like its sister ships, served in Germany's overseas colonies. The ship was launched on 1 April 1901 in the Kaiserliche Werft, Danzig. It had a crew of 9 officers and 121 men.

Service history
In September 1902, after the Haitian rebel ship Crête-à-Pierrot hijacked the German steamer Markomannia and seized weapons destined for the Haitian government, Germany sent the Panther to Haiti. The Panther found the rebel ship. The rebel Admiral Killick evacuated his crew and blew up the Crête-à-Pierrot, which was by then under fire from the Panther. There were concerns about how the United States would view the action in the context of the Monroe Doctrine. But despite legal advice describing the sinking as "illegal and excessive", the US State Department endorsed the action. The New York Times declared that "Germany was quite within its rights in doing a little housecleaning on her own account". Some months later the Panther participated in the German naval contingent of the Venezuela Crisis of 1902-1903 and bombarded the settlement of Fort San Carlos, near Maracaibo. The shallow waters that connected lake Maracaibo with the sea were passable for major ships only in the strait that separated San Carlos from the island of Zapara, yet even there it needed the help of a local pilot to avoid the sand banks and shallow waters of the passage.

The battle started when the fort's gunners opened fire on the Panther when it was crossing the bar. The Panther returned fire but the shallow waters prevented it from making an effective bombardment. Inside the fort, two of the gunners, Manuel Quevedo and Carlos José Cárdenas, managed to score several hits at the Panther with their 80-millimeter Krupp gun, causing considerable damage to the ship. After half an hour of exchanging fire, the Germans retreated.

In 1905, the Panther was deployed to the Brazilian Port of Itajahy, where its crew conducted an unauthorized search and captured a German deserter on Brazilian soil. This incident became known as the "Panther Affair" ("Caso Panther").

Agadir Crisis
The Panther became notorious in 1911 when it was deployed to the Moroccan port of Agadir during the "Agadir Crisis" (also called the "Second Moroccan Crisis"). The Panther was supposedly sent to protect German citizens in the port, a German sales representative, Hermann Wilberg, had been sent to Agadir on behalf of the Foreign office, but only arrived three days after the Panther. The ships mission was actually to apply pressure on the French concerning the attempted French colonization of Morocco in order to achieve a territorial compensation in French Equatorial Africa. This led to the term "gunboat diplomacy", a term used especially by the British. The term refers to diplomatic demands backed up by a show of force. The incident contributed to the international tensions that would lead to the First World War.

The ship was scrapped in 1931.