Irene-class cruiser

The Irene class was a pair of protected cruisers, Irene and Prinzess Wilhelm, built for the Imperial German Navy in the late 1880s. They were the first protected cruisers the German Navy built, designed after the Admiralty under Leo von Caprivi settled what kind of cruiser should replace the rigged screw corvettes of the 1860s and 1870s. Each ship carried a main battery of fourteen 15 cm guns and reached about 18 knots using two double-expansion steam engines and four coal-fired boilers. Both served with the East Asia Squadron, and Prinzess Wilhelm took a leading part in the seizure of the Jiaozhou Bay leased territory in November 1897. They were modernized between 1899 and 1905, left active service in 1914 for secondary roles as a submarine tender and a mine storage hulk, and were sold for scrap in the early 1920s.