SMS Medusa (1864)

Illustration of Medusa's sister ship Nymphe at the Battle of Jasmund, by Willy Stöwer
History
Name	Medusa
Namesake	Medusa
Builder	Königliche Werft, Danzig
Laid down	6 February 1862
Launched	20 October 1864
Commissioned	10 April 1867
Stricken	5 April 1881
Fate	Broken up, 1891
General characteristics
Class and type	Nymphe-class corvette
Displacement	Full load: 1,202 metric tons (1,183 long tons)
Length	64.9 m (212 ft 11 in) (loa)
Beam	10.2 m (33 ft 6 in)
Draft	3.92 m (12 ft 10 in)
Installed power	4 × fire-tube boilers 800 metric horsepower (790 ihp)
Propulsion	1 × marine steam engine 1 × screw propeller
Speed	12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph)
Range	1,250 nautical miles (2,320 km; 1,440 mi) at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph)
Crew	14 officers 176 sailors
Armament	10 × 36-pounder guns 6 × 12-pounder guns

SMS Medusa was a steam corvette built for the Prussian Navy in the 1860s. She was the second and final member of the Nymphe class, ordered as part of a naval expansion program to counter the Danish Navy over the disputed ownership of Schleswig and Holstein. Medusa was laid down in February 1862, was launched in October 1864, and was completed in September 1865. She had one sister ship, Nymphe, and the vessels were wooden-hulled ships armed with a battery of sixteen guns.

Medusa went on two major overseas cruises during her career, the first to the Mediterranean Sea in 1867–1868 during the Cretan Revolt against Ottoman rule. The second, lengthier voyage lasted from 1868 to 1871, and centered on operations in East Asia. There, she protected individuals from the German states in Japan during the final stage of the Boshin War, helped to suppress Chinese pirates, and visited numerous ports to show the flag. After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Medusa was trapped in Yokohama, Japan by a French squadron blockading the port; as a result, she saw no action during the conflict.

After returning to unified Germany in 1872, Medusa was converted into a training ship, a role she filled for the next eight years. During this period, she went on a number of training cruises, both in the Baltic Sea and longer voyages to North, Central, and South America, as well as the Mediterranean. She helped to monitor tensions in the Balkans in the mid-1870s and helped to secure restitution for the murder of a German diplomat in Salonika. Worn out by 1880 and in need of a thorough overhaul, the navy instead decided to remove the ship from service, using her as a hulk until 1891, when she was sold for scrap.