SMS Camäleon was the lead ship of the of steam-powered gunboats of the Prussian Navy (later the Imperial German Navy) that was launched in 1860. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Camäleon saw little active use. She served during the Second Schleswig War of 1864 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, but saw no action in either conflict. Her peacetime career was limited to survey work in 1865 and limited tender duties in and around Kiel in 1867–1868. In poor condition by 1872, she was stricken from the naval register and used as a storage hulk in Kiel. She was broken up for scrap some time after 1878. Design Camäleon 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 muzzle-loading gun and two rifled 12-pounder muzzle-loading guns. Service history The keel for Camäleon was laid down in September 1859 at the Königliche Werft (Royal Shiypard) in Danzig, and she was officially named on 18 October. The ship was launched on 4 August 1860, the first member of her class. Since the initial sea trials that were conducted by the shipyard proved to be unsatisfactory, commissioning of the ship was delayed from the originally scheduled date of 23 June 1861 to 6 August. After entering service, she joined her sister ship and the Jäger-class gunboats , , , and for a visit to Skagen in Denmark and the free imperial cities of Hamburg and Bremen. The tour was commanded by Korvettenkapitän (Corvette Captain) Hans Kuhn, who flew his flag in Camäleon. After the stop in Skagen, the corvette and the schooner Hela joined the flotilla of gunboats. While on their way back to Prussia in September, they stopped in Lübeck. After arriving back in Danzig, Camäleon was decommissioned. The ship had not been able to reach her designed speed on the cruise, so AG Vulcan had to make modifications to the engine at its own expense. Camäleon remained laid up until the outbreak of the Second Schleswig