SMS Sperber (1860)

Sperber's sister Fuchs
History
Prussia
Name	Sperber
Builder	Domcke, Grabow
Laid down	1859
Launched	14 February 1860
Commissioned	11 February 1864
Decommissioned	31 May 1877
Stricken	12 November 1878
General characteristics
Type	Gunboat
Displacement	Design: 237 t (233 long tons) Full load: 283 t (279 long tons)
Length	41.2 m (135 ft 2 in)
Beam	6.69 m (21 ft 11 in)
Draft	2.2 m (7 ft 3 in)
Installed power	4 × boilers 220 PS (220 ihp)
Propulsion	2 × marine steam engines 1 × screw propeller
Speed	9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph)
Complement	2 officers 38 enlisted
Armament	1 × 24-pounder gun 2 × 12-pounder guns

SMS Sperber was a steam gunboat of the Jäger class built for the Prussian Navy in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The ship was ordered as part of a program to strengthen Prussia's coastal defense forces, then oriented against neighboring Denmark. She was armed with a battery of three guns. The ship saw very little activity during her career. She was activated during the Second Schleswig War against Denmark in 1864 and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, being used to defend the Prussian coast. She saw no action against enemy forces in either conflict, however. Sperber was used intermittently as a tender in the 1870s, and was struck from the naval register in 1878. She was then used as a barge in Kiel.