She also made numerous trips abroad, including several occasions escorting members of the House of Hohenzollern on visits to Britain, Russia, and elsewhere.

By the 1890s, she began to be used in a variety of secondary roles in addition to her normal duties, including as a fisheries protection vessel, a training ship, and a tender.

Initial testing lasted until 30 April and design defects that were discovered during the trials necessitated corrections at the shipyard.

The ships conducted training maneuvers in the North and Baltic Seas that year, and from 20 to 24 December, they visited Frederikshavn, Denmark during a cruise through the Kattegat and Skagerrak for a test of torpedo boat endurance.

From 6 to 22 August, Blitz led the division on a cruise to Trondheim, Norway as another demonstration of torpedo boats' ability to operate at sea.

She was present for the ceremonial start of construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal in Kiel, after which she steamed around Denmark to Wilhelmshaven.

There, she embarked Princes Wilhelm and Heinrich and took them to Britain for the Golden Jubilee of their grandmother Queen Victoria on 20 June.

Training exercises were then held in the Baltic and North Seas, during which Blitz and the torpedo boats formed IV Division, and on 28 September she was decommissioned.

She remained in German waters in 1889, conducting training maneuvers with the torpedo boats in July and escorting Wilhelm II on a voyage to Britain in mid-September.

[10][11][12] The year 1890 passed without incident; Blitz escorted Wilhelm II on a visit to Norway and she was present for the ceremonial transfer of the island of Helgoland from British to German control (by way of the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty).

During the 1894 maneuvers, which postulated a two-front war against France and Russia, Blitz remained in the Baltic to defend against the simulated Russian attack.

She was present for the naval review held for Tsar Nicholas II of Russia during his visit to Kiel that August.

During training maneuvers on 10 May, the torpedo boat S71 struck Blitz and seriously damaged her rudder, forcing her to go to the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Kiel for repairs.

She operated as part of the simulated German fleet under the command of Admiral Wilhelm Büchsel Following the conclusion of the exercises, she was decommissioned in Kiel on 22 September.

She was moved to the Kaiserliche Werft in Danzig for a thorough overhaul that included the installation of new boilers; work lasted until early 1903.

She steamed with the fleet on a major training cruise into the Atlantic in July and August, during which she was used as a dispatch boat and a squadron tender.

[16][17] In 1904, Blitz was transferred support the battleships of I Battle Squadron, though during the summer training exercises she reverted to Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The year 1905 followed the same routine, with the ship alternating between I Squadron and Kaiser Wilhelm II, though she also served temporarily with the scouting unit.

She was present for a cruise to Norway in 1906, along with a fleet review in Hamburg involving the German Flottenverein (Navy League) from 29 April to 20 May.

[18] In need of another overhaul by 1910, Blitz went into dry dock at the Kaiserliche Werft in Danzig for repairs that lasted from 30 April to 1 August.

[18] The ship's activities during World War I are unclear; according to the historian Erich Gröner, Blitz was mobilized for coastal defense patrols in August, serving in this capacity until 1915 when she reverted to tender duties.

The historians Hans Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, and Hans-Otto Steinmetz disagree, stating that she remained in her tender role for I Squadron for the first three years of the war, before serving in the fleet that conducted Operation Albion—the amphibious assault on the islands in the Gulf of Riga—in October 1917.