 Grille in her original configuration
| |
| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Operators | |
| Preceded by | Nix class |
| Succeeded by | SMS Loreley |
| Completed | 1 |
| Retired | 1 |
| History | |
.svg){kind=small} Prussia | |
| Name | Grille |
| Builder | Chantiers et Ateliers Augustin Normand |
| Laid down | 1856 |
| Launched | 9 September 1857 |
| Commissioned | 3 June 1858 |
| Stricken | 7 January 1920 |
| Fate | Broken up |
| General characteristics [a] | |
| Class and type | Unique aviso |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 56.86 m (186 ft 7 in) o/a |
| Beam | 7.38 m (24 ft 3 in) |
| Draft | 2.84 m (9 ft 4 in) |
| Installed power |
|
| Propulsion |
|
| Sail plan | Schooner |
| Speed | 13 kn (24 km/h; 15 mph) |
| Complement |
|
| Armament | 2 × 12-pound guns |
SMS Grille was an aviso of the Prussian Navy built in France in the mid-1850s as part of a naval expansion program directed by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who saw the need for a stronger fleet. She was authorized in 1855 in the aftermath of the First Schleswig War, which had demonstrated the weakness of the Prussian fleet. Grille was the first screw propeller-driven steamship to be built for Prussia; all earlier steam-powered vessels had been paddle steamers.
Initially operated without armament, she received a battery of two guns in 1864 during the Second Schleswig War; during that conflict, she participated in three minor skirmishes with the Danish blockade squadron in the Baltic Sea. She was disarmed after the war for use as a royal yacht, frequently carrying Crown Prince Friedrich and his family on cruises abroad, including on a trip to represent the North German Confederation at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Grille was rearmed and saw action again in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, briefly skirmishing with a French squadron and in the process disrupting their planned attack on Swinemünde.
She returned to yacht duties after the war before being replaced by the new yacht Hohenzollern in 1879. Grille was reclassified as an aviso, serving with the main fleet through the 1880s. Later in the decade, she took on additional roles, including as a survey vessel and as a training ship. The 1890s passed largely uneventfully for Grille, and beginning in 1902, she began to serve as a headquarters ship and a tender for the fleet. She remained in service through July 1914, when she was decommissioned weeks before the outbreak of World War I. In 1915, she was reactivated to serve as a tender for the training cruiser Freya, a role she filled until the end of the war. Decommissioned in December 1918, she was struck from the naval register in January 1920 and later broken up for scrap. With an active career that spanned sixty-two years, she was the longest-serving vessel in the Prussian and later German fleet.
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