The Camäleon-class gunboats came about as a result of a program to strengthen the Prussian Navy in the late 1850s in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Reichsflotte and in the midst of rising tensions with Denmark.

In 1859, Prince Regent Wilhelm approved a construction program for some fifty-two gunboats to be built over the next fifteen years, of which eight became the Camäleon class.

The navy initially intended to send Basilisk to East Asian waters, but the Camäleon-class gunboats were too small for such an extended overseas deployment.

Later that year, the vessels entered the Black Sea; under the terms of the Treaty of Paris that had ended the Crimean War in 1856, Prussia was permitted to station warships in Sulina at the mouth of the Danube to enforce the peace.

At the time, the Danish fleet was far superior to the Prussian naval forces initially available, which allowed the Danes to blockade the German coast.

To assist the Prussians, the Austrian Navy sent Kommodore (Commodore) Wilhelm von Tegetthoff with the screw frigates Schwarzenberg and Radetzky to break the Danish blockade.

[8][9] On 4 May, the combined squadron arrived in Cuxhaven, then an enclave of the free city of Hamburg, at the mouth of the Elbe river.

[5] On the morning of 9 May, Tegetthoff learned that a Danish squadron consisting of the steam frigates Niels Juel and Jylland and the corvette Hejmdal were patrolling off the island of Heligoland.

After Schwarzenberg caught fire, Tegetthoff broke off the action and escaped to the neutral waters around Heligoland, where the ships remained until early the next day.

Though the Danish squadron had won a tactical victory at Heligoland, the arrival of Austrian warships in the North Sea forced the Danes to withdraw their blockade.

The Austrian fleet was unable to leave the Adriatic Sea, owing to Prussia's alliance with Italy, and so Basilisk did not see action during the conflict.

From 1867 to 1868, she took part in a new survey of the German coast in the North Sea; this duty lasted from 26 October 1867 to 21 April 1868, and was conducted in company with the aviso Loreley and the gunboat Wolf.

1", and used as a storage hulk for naval mines as part of the harbor defenses of Wilhelmshaven until at least 1900, the last recorded date she was still in service.