SMS Freya was a protected cruiser of the, built for the German Imperial Navy in the 1890s, along with her sister ships,,, and. Freya was laid down at the Imperial Dockyard in Danzig in 1895, launched in April 1897, and commissioned into the Navy in October 1898. The ship was armed with a battery of two 21 cm guns and eight 15 cm guns and had a top speed of. Freya served in the German fleet for the initial years of her career, unlike her sister ships, all of which served abroad on foreign stations. As a result, she led a fairly uneventful career in the fleet. After a modernization in 1905-1907, Freya was used as a school ship for cadets. At the outbreak of World War I, Freya was mobilized into V Scouting Group, but served in front-line duty only briefly. She was used as a barracks ship after 1915, and ultimately sold for scrapping in 1921.
Design
In the early 1890s, elements in the German naval command structure grappled with what type of cruiser ought to be built to fulfill the various needs of the fleet. The Reichsmarineamt preferred to build a combination of large cruisers of around along the lines of and significantly smaller vessels of about to support them, while the Oberkommando der Marine argued that a uniform force of cruisers was preferable. In the event, the RMA carried the day and three 6,000-ton cruisers were authorized in 1895. They resembled the larger s, designed at the same time, albeit at reduced scale. Freya was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of forward. As designed, she displaced, and at full load, her displacement rose to. Her propulsion system consisted of three vertical 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single screw propeller, with steam provided by twelve coal-fired Niclausse boilers. Her engines were rated for, and provided a top speed of. The ship had a range of approximately at. She had a crew of 31 officers and 446 enlisted men. The ship was armed with two 21 cm SK L/40 guns in single turrets, one forward and one aft. The guns were supplied with 58 rounds of ammunition each. They had a range of. Vineta also carried eight 15 cm SK L/40 guns. Four were mounted in turrets amidships and the other four were placed in casemates. These guns had a range of. She also carried ten 8.8 cm SK L/35 naval guns. The gun armament was rounded out by machine guns. She was also equipped with three torpedo tubes with eight torpedoes, two launchers were mounted on the broadside and the third was in the bow, all below the waterline. In 1916, all of the ships of the class were disarmed, with the exception of Freya, which was re-equipped with a single 15 cm gun, four 10.5 cm SK L/45 guns, and fourteen 8.8 cm guns of both the L/30 and L/35 versions, for use as a gunnery training ship. The ship was protected with Krupp armor; their deck was on the horizontal with sloped sides that were thick. Her main and secondary battery turrets had 10 cm thick sides and the secondary casemates had the same level of protection. The conning tower had 15 cm thick sides.
Service history
Freya was ordered under the contract name "Ersatz " and was laid down at the Imperial Dockyard in Danzig in 1895. She was launched on 27 April 1897, after which fitting-out work commenced. She was commissioned into the German navy on 20 October 1898. After her commissioning, Freya served with the German fleet. On 1 September 1902, Freya joined the Cruiser Division of the I Squadron of the German home fleet. The Division consisted of the armored cruiser, the flagship,, and the light cruisers,, and. The Division participated in the summer fleet maneuvers of August-September 1902. In 1905, Freya went into drydock at the Imperial Dockyard in Wilhelmshaven for modernization. During the refit she was re-boilered; she had been built originally with three stacks, and during the modernization they were trunked into two funnels. The refit was finished in 1907, after which Freya was used as a training ship for naval cadets. In 1907, Günther Lütjens served aboard the ship as a cadet; Lütjens went on to command the task forcecomposed of and in World War II. In August 1908, Freya represented Germany at celebrations in Halifax, Canada, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Canadian Parliament. While entering the port at around midnight on 9 August, she inadvertently rammed a schooner in heavy fog. Nine sailors were killed in the accident. Freya had a short career during World War I. At the outbreak of hostilities, she was briefly mobilized into V Scouting Group, which was tasked with training cadets in the Baltic Sea. By the end of 1914, however, the ships were again removed from service. She was then put into service as a coastal defense ship. After 1915, she was withdrawn from front-line duty again and returned to service as a training ship based in Flensburg. She served in this capacity through to the end of the war. In 1915, Bernhard Rogge, who would go on to command the raider Atlantis during World War II, served aboard the ship as a cadet. The old aviso became Freyas tender starting in July 1915. She was stricken on 25 January 1920 and used briefly as a barracks ship for police in Hamburg. She was ultimately broken up for scrap in Harburg in 1921.
