SMS Möwe (1879)

SMS Möwe (Seagull) was the second member of the Habicht class of gunboats built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the late 1870s. Intended to serve abroad, the ship was ordered as part of a construction program intended to modernize Germany's fleet of cruising vessels in the mid-1870s. The Habicht class was armed with a battery of five guns, and was the first class of German gunboat to use compound steam engines. The ship had a top speed of 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph).

Möwe embarked on three major overseas cruises during her career, the first two as a frontline combat vessel. The first, from 1880 to 1882, took the ship to the South Pacific. On the way home, she was diverted to Egypt in response to the Anglo-Egyptian War to protect Germans and other foreign nationals in the country. A second major deployment followed, this time to Africa, which lasted from 1884 to 1889. Möwe was involved in the establishment of the German colonial empire in German West Africa, carrying the imperial commissioner, Gustav Nachtigal, to establish formal colonial treaties in Togoland and Kamerun. Nachtigal died from malaria while aboard Möwe in 1885. Later that year, the ship moved to German East Africa, where she assisted in the suppression of the Abushiri revolt in 1888.

After returning to Germany in 1889, Möwe was converted into a survey ship, and in that guise she began her final overseas voyage in 1890. She initially sailed to German East Africa and worked off the coast for the next four years. In 1894, she moved to the South Pacific to begin surveying the colonies in German New Guinea, Micronesia, and Melanesia. Worn out and unable to make the voyage back to Germany by 1905, she instead sailed to the German naval base in Qingdao, China, where she was hulked. In 1910, she was sold and subsequently broken up.