SMS Vineta was a member of the of steam frigates built for the Prussian Navy in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The class comprised five ships, and were the first major steam-powered warships ordered for the Prussian Navy. The ships were ordered as part of a major construction program to strengthen the nascent Prussian fleet, under the direction of Prince Adalbert, and were intended to provide defense against the Royal Danish Navy. Vineta was armed with a battery of twenty-eight guns, and was capable of steaming at a speed of . Vineta was laid down in 1860, launched in 1863, and commissioned in 1864.
Completion of the ship was rushed in early 1864 in the run up to the Second Schleswig War against Denmark; the ship was still not complete at the start of the war, and so only saw brief action as a guard ship at Danzig. Vineta embarked on a major overseas voyage from 1865 to 1868, which saw the ship complete the first circumnavigation of the globe by a Prussian warship. By the time she had returned, Prussia had created the North German Confederation, a step during the unification of Germany, and as a result, Vineta passed into the North German Federal Navy. The ship was again used as a guard ship at Friedrichsort during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, but did not see action. The war resulted in the unification of the German Empire, and so Vineta now flew the third naval ensign of her career, that of the (Imperial Navy).
Vineta spent much of the 1870s abroad on a series of extended voyages. The first, from 1871 to 1873, took the ship to the Americas, where she intervened in a dispute between German merchants and the Haitian government. She also visited a number of ports in South and North America. The second, from 1875 to 1877, saw the ship deployed to East Asia. While there in 1876, she was part of the Anglo-German naval demonstration that resulted in the Chefoo Convention, an unequal treaty with Qing China. Her final voyage abroad began in 1879 and concluded in 1881; this time, her activities in Asian waters were less eventful. Vineta was used intermittently for training duties in the early 1880s before being struck from the naval register in 1884. Employed as a stationary training ship from 1884 to 1897, she was then broken up in Kiel.
Design
In the immediate aftermath of the First Schleswig War against Denmark, Prince Adalbert began drawing up plans for the future of the Prussian Navy; he also secured the Jade Treaty that saw the port of Wilhelmshaven transferred to Prussia from the Duchy of Oldenburg, and which provided the Prussian fleet with an outlet on the North Sea. Adalbert called for a force of three screw frigates and six screw corvettes to protect Prussian maritime trade in the event of another war with Denmark. Design work was carried out between 1854 and 1855, and the first two ships were authorized in November 1855; a further pair was ordered in June 1860, and the final member of the class was ordered in February 1866.
Vineta was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. She displaced as designed and at full load. The ship had short forecastle and sterncastle decks. Her superstructure consisted primarily of a small deckhouse aft. She had a crew of 35 officers and 345 enlisted men.
Her propulsion system consisted of a single horizontal single-expansion steam engine driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by four coal-burning fire-tube boilers. Exhaust was vented through a single funnel located amidships. Vineta was rated to steam at a top speed of , but she significantly exceeded this speed, reaching from . The ship had a cruising radius of about at a speed of . To supplement the steam engine on long voyages abroad, she carried a full-ship rig with a total surface area of . The screw could be retracted while cruising under sail.
Vineta was armed with a battery of twenty-eight 68-pounder guns. By 1869, she had been rearmed with a battery of seventeen RK L/22 guns and two K L/23 guns.
Service history Construction and the Second Schleswig War The new ship was authorized on 28 June 1860, though Adalbert initially opposed building another Arcona-class frigate, owing to the poor results initially seen with when she entered service the year before. The chief constructor, Carl Elbertzhagen, convinced Adalbert that the new ship would achieve the desired speed through alterations to the hull shape, as well as more powerful engines. Adalbert agreed to proceed with construction, and the keel for Vineta was laid down at the (Royal Dockyard) in Danzig on 17 September that year. Work on the ship proceeded slowly, primarily due to a shortage of wood timbers for her hull and other fittings. The large oak timbers for her hull only began to be delivered in April 1861. She was eventually launched on 4 June 1863, and Crown Prince Friedrich and his wife Victoria attended the ceremony, during which Victoria christened the ship after the eponymous legendary Germanic city. After the start of the Second Schleswig War in early 1864, Vineta was provisionally commissioned on 3 March for limited wartime service. Her first commander was (KK—Corvette Captain) Heinrich Köhler. She was moored in the roadstead at Neufahrwasser as a guardship. Soon thereafter, the Danish frigate appeared off the coast, but she did not engage Vineta. The latter vessel embarked on a short sea trial and shooting practice on 7 and 8 April.
Denmark announced the blockade of Danzig and Pillau on 19 April, and eleven days later, the ship of the line and several other warships appeared off Neufahrwasser. Vineta and Skjold engaged in a short and ineffective exchange of fire, but neither side was willing to engage more closely. The Danes refused to be drawn into range of the Prussian coastal artillery batteries, and the Prussians were unwilling to be lured out to confront the overwhelmingly superior Danish squadron. This inconclusive artillery duel was later repeated with the Danish ironclad warship . Köhler was criticized for his passive conduct in the engagement, but his ship was still incomplete and the crew was essentially untrained. Vineta nevertheless contributed to the defenses that prevented the Danes from mounting a close blockade of the port. On 12 May, the two sides agreed to an armistice to negotiate an end to the war, and at that time, Vineta sailed to Swinemünde. There, she participated in a fleet review conducted for the king, and the commander of the Prussian Navy, Prince Adalbert, used Vineta as his flagship for the ceremony. The armistice broke down on 26 June and fighting resumed, but Vineta saw no further action. She and the rest of the Prussian frigate squadron cruised along the eastern coast of Schleswig and Holstein from mid-August to 18 September.
In October, the ship came under the command of (KzS—Captain at Sea) Hans Kuhn, by which time the war had ended. On 29 October, Vineta and the new screw corvette escorted the training ships , , and on a visit to Portsmouth, United Kingdom. By 22 November, Vineta had arrived back in Kiel. The ship remained in commission over the winter, and from 20 to 22 April 1865, she participated in a commemoration of the Battle of Düppel the year before. Vineta embarked Prince Otto of Bavaria on 28 April for a short cruise. She supported the transfer of the headquarters of the (Baltic Sea Naval Station) from Danzig to Kiel in the recently conquered Schleswig. Friedrich and Victoria embarked aboard Vineta for a cruise from Kiel to Sonderburg and back from 8 to 10 July. Two days later, the ship sailed to Danzig, took the old barracks ship under tow, and brought her to Kiel. Later that year, as tensions between Prussia and Austria rose over control of Schleswig and Holstein, the Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck threatened to arrest Friedrich VIII, one of the claimants to the duchies. Bismarck intended to send Vineta to take Friedrich VIII to Pillau, where he was to be imprisoned, but an agreement was reached to temporarily settle the issue.
1865–1868 overseas cruise
On 28 September 1865, Vineta received orders to make preparations for a voyage to South America. War between Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina—the Paraguayan War and Uruguayan War—threatened German settlers in the countries, and the United States agreed to the deployment of Vineta in response. The ship soon got underway, and by 20 January 1866, she reached Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she stayed for three days. She continued south to Montevideo, Uruguay, arriving on 17 February. After arriving there, the ship received orders to sail to Chile in response to the Chincha Islands War that had recently broken out between that country and Spain, and which later drew in Peru as well. Kuhn remained in the La Plata area until 18 March, however, as the situation there remained tense. Vineta arrived in Valparaíso, Chile, on 7 May, joining a British squadron that was already in the city. The situation in Chile soon calmed, and on 23 July, the ship departed to visit Callao, Peru. She arrived there on 6 August, remaining there until 2 September.
Kuhn had received orders to cross the Pacific to China; Britain had requested Prussian assistance in combating piracy in Chinese waters since January 1866, and Vineta was to join the efforts to defeat the pirates. The ship stopped in Honolulu, Hawaii, the first time a Prussian warship had stopped in the islands; from there, she passed through the Volcano Islands before arriving at Wusong district of Shanghai, China, on 10 December. Here, Kuhn made contact with the British Rear Admiral Henry Keppel. The Prussian consul in China, Guido von Rehfues, informed Kuhn that the prospects for a successful attack on the pirates were low, given that large warships such as Vineta were unable to enter the shallow coastal waters from which the pirates operated. The Prussian consul in Guangzhou, Richard von Carlowitz, confirmed Rehfues' assessment. The ship left Shanghai in April 1867, and on 30 May, Kuhn received orders to sail to visit Japan, along with Yakushima and Formosa, the latter islands to be surveyed for potential sites for a Prussian naval base The ship reached Yokohama, Japan, on 28 June. The consul Max von Brandt embarked on the ship there in early August for a trip to Hakodate, Japan. While there, Vineta conducted shooting practice and rescued 152 passengers and crew of the British mail steamer that had run aground in the area. Vineta arrived back in Yokohama on 3 September. While the ship was moored there, an intestinal disease broke out amongst the crew.