SMS Blücher (1877)

Illustration of SMS Blücher by Christopher Rave
History
German Empire
Name:	SMS Blücher
Namesake:	Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher
Builder:	Norddeutsche Schiffbau, Kiel
Laid down:	1876
Launched:	20 September 1877
Completed:	21 December 1879
Fate:	Sold 1908
General characteristics
Class and type:	Bismarck-class corvette
Displacement:	3,332 t (3,279 long tons)
Length:	82.5 m (270 ft 8 in)
Beam:	13.7 m (44 ft 11 in)
Draught:	6.18 m (20 ft 3 in)
Installed power:	2,500 ihp (1,900 kW) 4 boilers
Propulsion:	1 shaft 1 × 3-cylinder marine steam engine
Speed:	12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph)
Range:	1,940 nmi (3,590 km; 2,230 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:	404
Armament:	16 × 15 cm (5.9 in) guns

SMS Blücher was a Bismarck-class corvette built for the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) in the late 1870s.

Career

Blücher in heavy seas with a torpedo boat

Blücher was commanded by Alfred von Tirpitz from August 1880 to 1884 while he was assigned to the Torpedo School at Kiel.^[1] Later the Blücher was a ship of the Torpedo School at Flensburg-Mürwik. She was decommissioned after a boiler explosion in Mürwik in 1909.^[2]

Notes

1. Kelly, pp. 52, 58
2. Gröner, Erich / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass (1982). Die deutschen Kriegsschiffe 1815–1945. Bernard & Graefe, pp. 70-72. ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 (German)

References

• Gardiner, Robert; Chesneau, Roger; Kolesnik, Eugene M., eds. (1979). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1860–1905. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-133-5.
• Gröner, Erich (1990). German Warships: 1815–1945. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-790-9. OCLC 22101769.
• Kelly, Patrick J. (2011). Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35593-5.

External links

• Media related to Blücher (ship, 1877) at Wikimedia Commons