The ships were built as part of a naval expansion program aimed at countering the powerful Danish Navy in the context of the disputed ownership of Schleswig and Holstein.

At the time, the American Civil War had recently broken out, and the Confederate use of privateers would prove to be a significant threat to neutral shipping.

In March that year, the naval minister Albrecht von Roon, who was also the Prussian Ministry of War, issued a fleet plan that called for twelve screw corvettes in addition to a host of other vessels as part of a program to prepare for a likely conflict with Denmark.

The outer hull was carvel built and was sheathed in copper to protect the wood from biofouling on extended cruises abroad, where routine maintenance could not be carried out.

The ships were good sea boats and they sailed well, unlike most of the other screw corvettes built by Prussia and the later unified Germany.

Steam was provided by two coal-fired fire-tube boilers manufactured by J Penn & Sons of Greenwich, which were ducted into a single retractable funnel.

Her attack nevertheless convinced the French admiral, Édouard Bouët-Willaumez, that his heavy ships were not useful in a close blockade of German ports, and so they left.

[8] In 1871, Nymphe embarked on a major overseas deployment to the Pacific Ocean and East Asia; while on the way, her crew caused a minor diplomatic incident with Brazil.

While on the East Asia station, the ship's captain, Louis von Blanc, conducted negotiations the governments of islands in Oceania, Borneo, and the Sulu Archipelago.

She also toured numerous cities to show the flag and searched unsuccessfully for a place to create a coaling station for German ships.

She served in that capacity for the next decade, during which she conducted training cruises, usually to the Americas, though in 1882 she toured the Mediterranean Sea, in part to strengthen German naval forces in the region during the 'Urabi revolt in Egypt.

She also protected German citizens in Japan during the final stage of the Boshin War and was damaged in a typhoon off the Japanese coast.

During this period, she went on a number of training cruises, both in the Baltic Sea and longer voyages to North, Central, and South America, as well as the Mediterranean.

She surreptitiously went to the Mediterranean to monitor tensions in the Balkans in 1876 and helped to secure restitution for the murder of a German diplomat in Salonika.