Carola-class corvette

The Carola class was a group of six steam corvettes built by the German Kaiserliche Marine in the late 1870s and 1880s.

Design
As German commercial interests began to expand to overseas markets in Asia and the Pacific in the 1870s, the need for long-range cruising warships became increasingly severe, particularly as other European powers started to exclude German businesses from activity abroad. By the mid-1870s, the fleet of corvettes available to the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) was rapidly ageing, with several vessels twenty years old. In 1875, the design for a new class of steam corvettes was prepared, and six ships were ordered, the last to a modified design.