SMS Cyclop was a of the Prussian Navy (later the Imperial German Navy) that was launched in 1860. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Cyclop served during the three wars of German unification; during the first, the Second Schleswig War on 1864, she guarded the Prussian coastline but saw no action. She supported the army's campaign against the Kingdom of Hanover during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and she defended the Elbe for the duration of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, but again took part in no battles. Badly deteriorated by 1872, she was stricken from the naval register in March that year and reconstructed into an iron-hulled gunboat. Recommissioned in 1875, she thereafter served abroad in the German colonial empire before being stricken again in 1888. She was thereafter used as a storage hulk before ultimately being broken up for scrap after 1914. Design Cyclop was long, with a beam of and a draft of . She displaced at full load. The ship's crew consisted of 4 officers and 67 enlisted men. She was powered by a single marine steam engine that drove one 3-bladed screw propeller, with steam provided by two coal-fired trunk boilers, which gave her a top speed of at . As built, she was equipped with a three-masted schooner rig. The ship was armed with a battery of one rifled 24-pounder gun and two rifled 12-pounder guns. Service history Construction – 1868 The keel for Cyclop was laid down in 1859 at the Königliche Werft (Royal Dockyard) in Danzig, and she was launched on 8 September 1860. Normally, new ships underwent sea trials upon completion, but budgetary shortages prevented the Prussian Navy from running a thorough examination of the vessel. Instead, the crew was limited to what could be observed during the short trip from Danzig to the naval arsenal at Dänholm off Stralsund. Upon arrival, she was laid up. The Prussian Navy planned to reactivate Cyclop in December 1863 owing to rising tensions between Prussia and Austria of the German Confederation and Denmark over the latter's November Constitution, which integrated the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg with Denmark, a violation of the London Protocol that had ended the First Schleswig War. Crew shortages and poor weather prevented Cyclop from being commissioned until January 1864. Following the outbreak of the Second Schleswig War in February, Cyclop served as the flagship of