SMS Carola

Carola and her sister ship Olga in Hong Kong in the 1880s
History
German Empire
Name	Carola
Namesake	Carola of Saxony
Builder	AG Vulcan Stettin
Laid down	1879
Launched	27 November 1880
Commissioned	1 September 1881
Decommissioned	10 January 1905
Fate	Broken up, 1906
General characteristics
Class and type	Carola-class corvette
Displacement	Full load: 2,424 t (2,386 long tons)
Length	76.35 m (250 ft 6 in)
Beam	12.5 m (41 ft)
Draft	4.98 m (16 ft 4 in)
Installed power	8 × fire-tube boilers 2,367 metric horsepower (2,335 ihp)
Propulsion	1 × screw propeller 1 × double-expansion steam engine
Speed	13.7 knots (25.4 km/h; 15.8 mph)
Range	3,420 nautical miles (6,330 km; 3,940 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Crew	10 officers 246 enlisted men
Armament	10 × 15 cm (5.9 in) guns 2 × 8.7 cm (3.4 in) guns 6 × 37 mm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss revolver cannons

SMS Carola was the lead ship of the Carola class of steam corvettes built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the 1880s. Intended for service in the German colonial empire, the ship was designed with a combination of steam and sail power for extended range, and was equipped with a battery of ten 15-centimeter (5.9 in) guns. Carola was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin in 1879, launched in November 1880, and completed in September 1881.

Carola was sent abroad twice during her career, the first immediately after entering service in 1881 and lasting into 1883. She sailed to the central Pacific Ocean to protect German interests in Samoa and Melanesia and was the first German warship to reach what would become German Southwest Africa. Her second deployment came in 1886, and lasted into 1891; the tour saw Carola alternate between German East Africa and the central Pacific. During operations in the former from 1888 to 1890, she participated in anti-slave trade operations and helped suppress the Abushiri revolt.

After returning to Germany in 1891, Carola was converted into a gunnery training ship, as she was by then obsolete as a warship. She served in this capacity through the 1890s and early 1900s, before being decommissioned in 1905, sold the following year, and broken up for scrap.