SMS Nautilus (1871)

SMS Nautilus was the second and final member of the Albatross class of steam gunboats built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the 1870s. The ship was ordered as part of a construction program intended to begin replacing the old Jäger-class gunboats that had been built a decade earlier. Unlike the older ships, Nautilus was intended to serve abroad to protect German economic interests overseas. The ship was armed with a battery of four guns, and had a top speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

Nautilus spent most of her career abroad, first off the coast of Spain in 1874–1875 during the Third Carlist War; the ship's captain was involved in settling a dispute between the Carlists and a German merchant ship captain whose vessel was attacked by Carlist forces. Nautilus thereafter sailed to the Pacific for a tour from 1876 to 1878 that saw the ship operate primarily off the coast of China. A second deployment to the Pacific followed from 1879 to 1881, and during this cruise the ship patrolled the South Pacific. Her third and final tour in the Pacific began in 1883. During the latter voyage in 1885, she was involved in establishing a protectorate in the Marshall Islands. Nautilus was transferred from the Pacific to African waters in 1887 before returning home late the following year. She was used as a survey ship from 1891 to 1893, but was in poor condition by that time, and she was accordingly struck from the naval register in 1896. The ship was used as a coal storage hulk until 1905, when she was sold to ship breakers and dismantled.