 Stein at anchor
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| History | |
|---|---|
 German Empire | |
| Name | SMS Stein |
| Namesake | Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein |
| Builder | Vulcan AG, Stettin |
| Laid down | 1878 |
| Launched | 14 September 1879 |
| Completed | 3 October 1880 |
| Fate | Sold for scrap, 1920 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Bismarck-class corvette |
| Displacement | Full load: 3,089 t (3,040 long tons) |
| Length | 82 m (269 ft) |
| Beam | 13.7 m (44 ft 11 in) |
| Draft | 5.2 m (17 ft 1 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion |
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| Speed | 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph) |
| Range | 2,380 nmi (4,410 km; 2,740 mi) at 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph) |
| Complement | 452 (including trainees) |
| Armament |
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SMS Stein was a Bismarck-class corvette built for the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) in the late 1870s. The ship was named after the Prussian statesman Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein. She was the sixth member of the class, which included five other vessels. The Bismarck-class corvettes were ordered as part of a major naval construction program in the early 1870s, and she was designed to serve as a fleet scout and on extended tours in Germany's colonial empire. Stein was laid down in 1878, launched in September 1879, and was commissioned into the fleet in October 1880. She was armed with a battery of twelve 15 cm (5.9 in) guns and had a full ship rig to supplement her steam engine on long cruises abroad.
Stein served almost her entire career as a training ship; her only non-training task came early in her career when she carried a replacement crew to Chinese waters for her sister ship Stosch in 1883–1884. The rest of her time in service was spent training naval cadets and apprentice seamen and participating in squadron and fleet training exercises. Her training duties frequently involved long-distance overseas cruises, typically either to the Mediterranean Sea or the West Indies and South America. On these cruises, Stein and other training ships visited foreign ports and responded to problems that arose involving German nationals abroad. She served in this role from 1885 to 1908, when she was stricken from the naval register and converted into a barracks ship. She continued on in this limited capacity through World War I, before being broken up in 1920.