SMS Sperber

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

Design
Sperber 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. Sperber 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 cannons.

Service history
Sperber was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig in September 1887. She was launched on 23 August 1888, and then-Kapitän zur See (Captain at Sea) Franz Mensing gave the launching speech. She began her sea trials on 2 April 1889, which lasted until 7 June. She was thereafter assigned to the South Seas Station in German New Guinea to replace the gunboats SMS Adler and SMS Eber (1887), which had been destroyed by the 1889 Apia cyclone.