SMS Drache was a of the Prussian Navy (later the Imperial German Navy) that was launched in 1860. Budgetary problems delayed her completion until 1869, and she first entered service during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, though she saw no significant action against the French Navy. Drache spent most of her career, between 1872 and 1887, conducting survey work in the North Sea, which later proved to be instrumental to the operations of German U-boats and minelayers during World War I. Drache was ultimately decommissioned in 1887, reduced to a coal hulk, and then expended as a target for the torpedo boat in 1889. Her wreck was later raised and broken up. Design Drache 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 68-pounder gun and two rifled 12-pounder guns. Service history Drache was laid down at the Königliche Werft (Royal Dockyard) in Danzig on 27 July 1861; she was not launched until 3 August 1865, owing to constitutional disputes over the budget, which delayed construction of the gunboat. The Prussian Landtag (State Diet) tried to block the military expansion program advocated by Albrecht von Roon, the Prussian Ministry of War, leading to a constitutional crisis where the army and navy operated without legal budgets. The Navy was thus unable to spare funding to complete Drache and her sister . Draches completion was similarly delayed by budgetary problems, and she was finally delivered to the navy at its base at Dänholm off Stralsund in late April 1869. The vessel was first commissioned for service in mid-July 1870, following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War earlier that month. She was assigned to a gunboat flotilla commanded by KK Franz von Waldersee, along with the aviso and the gunboats and . On 12 August, Waldersee took his four vessels the island of to Rügen, where they briefly engaged blockading French vessels before returning to port. On 10 September, the unit was disbanded, and Drache was sent to Rügen. In December, she was