[1] The Danish blockade had forced the Prussian government to requisition packet steamers like Preussischer Adler to defend German merchant traffic.

With the demobilization following a truce in August 1848, the navy relinquished the civilian vessels, but Adalbert continued to push for a strengthened fleet.

Adalbert and the British naval architect John Scott Russell agreed on building a pair of small avisos with iron hulls.

[1] Design work on the paddle steamers was completed in 1849,[3] and they were authorized in 1850; payment was made in March and King Friedrich Wilhelm IV approved the names Nix and Salamander, which had been suggested by Adalbert.

The contract signed with Robinson & Russell also included British assistance with the construction of the larger paddle steamer Danzig in Prussia.

[3] As a measure of protection for the propulsion machinery, the coal bunkers were arranged abreast of the engine and boiler rooms, and it was thought that the iron hull would also increase the vessels' resistance to damage.

Their Prussian careers were short, owing to a combination of the unfamiliarity of their crews with steamships and a series of boiler-related fires aboard Nix that resulted from flaws in her design (most significantly the fact that their stokeholds were wooden).

The ships took part in limited training exercises and took members of the Prussian nobility, including Prince Adalbert and King Friedrich Wilhelm IV on cruises in the Baltic.

The two avisos left Danzig in November, and while on the way to Britain, stopped in the Jade Bay to participate in the ceremonial founding of the city and naval base at Wilhelmshaven.

They later caused a minor diplomatic incident with the Kingdom of Hannover over the country's initial refusal to allow the vessels to enter Bremen and take on coal for the voyage to Britain.

Weser saw action against Russian forces during the Crimean War later that year; on 11 October, John Edmund Commerell and William Thomas Rickard—her commander and quartermaster—staged a raid in the Sea of Azov that earned them the Victoria Cross.