SMS Olga

SMS Olga was a member of the of steam corvettes built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the 1880s.

Design
The six ships of the Carola class were ordered in the late 1870s to supplement Germany's fleet of cruising warships, which at that time relied on several ships that were twenty years old. Olga and her sister ships were intended to patrol Germany's colonial empire and safeguard German economic interests around the world.

Olga was 76.35 m long overall, with a beam of 12.5 m and a draft of 4.98 m forward. She displaced 2424 t at full load. The ship's crew consisted of 10 officers and 265 enlisted men. She was powered by a single marine steam engine that drove one 2-bladed screw propeller and eight coal-fired fire-tube boilers, which gave her a top speed of 13.9 kn at 2399 PS. She had a cruising radius of 3420 nmi at a speed of 10 kn. As built, Olga was equipped with a three-masted barque rig, but she was not actually fitted with sails.

Olga was armed with a battery of ten 15 cm 22-caliber (cal.) breach-loading guns and two 8.7 cm 24-cal. guns. She also carried six 37 mm Hotchkiss revolver cannon. Later in her career, her armament was reduced to two 8.8 cm SK L/30 guns and ten small-caliber machine cannon of unrecorded type.

Service history


Olga was ordered as Ersatz Augusta, a replacement for the old corvette SMS Augusta, in late 1878; the contract for her construction was awarded to AG Vulcan Stettin. Her keel was laid down there in 1879, and she was launched on 11 December 1880. Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Carl Ferdinand Batsch gave the speech at her launching ceremony. Sea trials began in September 1881, and on 9 January 1882, Olga was pronounced ready for service.