SMS Vineta (1863)

SMS Vineta was a member of the Arcona class 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 11.7 knots (21.7 km/h; 13.5 mph). 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 Kaiserliche Marine (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.