SMS Falke

SMS Falke was an unprotected cruiser of the, built for the Imperial German Navy. She was the second member of the class of six vessels. The cruiser was laid down in 1890, launched in April 1891, and commissioned into the fleet in September of that month. Designed for overseas service, she carried a main battery of eight 10.5 cm guns and had a top speed of 15.5 kn.

Falke served abroad for the majority of her career, seeing duty in East Asia, the Central Pacific, and the Americas. She assisted in the suppression of a revolt in Samoa in 1893, and was damaged in a later uprising there in 1899. In 1901, Falke was transferred to the American Station, and the following year she took part in the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–03, during which she helped enforce an Anglo-German blockade of the Venezuelan coast. In 1907, Falke was recalled to Germany. She was stricken from the naval register in late 1912 and subsequently broken up for scrap.

Design


Falke was 82.6 m long overall and had a beam of 12.5 m and a draft of 4.45 m forward. She displaced 1868 MT at full combat load. Her propulsion system consisted of two horizontal 3-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines powered by four coal-fired cylindrical boilers. These provided a top speed of 15.5 kn and a range of approximately 2990 nmi at 9 kn. She had a crew of 9 officers and 152 enlisted men.

The ship was armed with eight 10.5 cm SK L/35 quick-firing guns in single pedestal mounts, supplied with 800 rounds of ammunition in total. They had a range of 10800 m. Two guns were placed side by side forward, two on each broadside in sponsons, and two side by side aft. The gun armament was rounded out by five revolver cannon. She was also equipped with two 35 cm torpedo tubes with five torpedoes, both of which were mounted on the deck.

Service history
Falke was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Kiel in 1890 under the contract name "D". She was launched on 4 April 1891 and commissioned in 14 September of that year. In August and September 1892, Falke participated in the annual fleet training maneuvers, assigned to the III Division, along with the coastal defense ship SMS Siegfried. Falke was thereafter transferred abroad; while en route to her duty station in the Far East, she stopped at Cape Cross in German South-West Africa in January 1893. There, her crew removed the padrão that had been placed there by the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão in the late 15th century. The stone monument was transported back to Berlin for preservation, while a granite copy, carried by the cruiser SMS Sperber, was installed in its place in 1895.

Falke thereafter served on the East Asia Station with the East Asia Division. In July 1893, she and her sister ship SMS Bussard assisted in the suppression of a local revolt led by Mata'afa Iosefo in Samoa. They were joined by the old British corvette HMS Curacao (1878), and the three vessels bombarded rebel positions on 7 July, forcing their surrender. In 1899, Falke and Bussard were transferred to the Australia Station. In March of that year, Falke was in the harbor at Apia in the Samoan Islands. Unrest on the island, again instigated by Mata'afa Iosefo, prompted the American cruiser USS Philadelphia (C-4) and the British sloop HMS Royalist (1883) and torpedo cruiser HMS Porpoise (1886) to shell the rebel positions. Their gunfire was poorly aimed, however, and several shells hit Falke.

In late 1901, Falke and the protected cruiser SMS Vineta (1897) were sent to Venezuela in a show of force to compel the Venezuelan government to make reparations for grievances related to internal conflicts in the 1890s. Starting in December 1902, Falke participated in the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903. A British merchant ship had been boarded and its crew arrested by Venezuelan forces on 13 December; in response, British forces bombarded the forts at Puerto Cabello, and enlisted the German squadron to assist them in punishing the Venezuelans. Falke and the light cruiser SMS Gazelle were tasked with blockading the Venezuelan coast, in cooperation with the British squadron. In January 1904, the ship visited New Orleans with the rest of the American Squadron, which at that time included Vineta, Gazelle, and the gunboat SMS Panther. Falke returned to Germany in 1907. She was stricken from the naval register on 25 October 1912 and broken up the following year at the Kaiserliche Werft in Danzig.