She operated in the region for nearly ten years, and in that time, she visited numerous foreign ports across both continents to protect German interests abroad.

These visits included two major stops in the United States for the Jamestown Exposition in 1907 and the Hudson–Fulton Celebration in 1909 and the hundredth anniversaries of the independence of Chile and Argentina, both in 1910.

She also intervened in periods of domestic unrest in various Central and South American countries, assisted merchant ships that suffered accidents, and helped to evacuate more than a thousand European civilians during the Mexican Revolution in late 1913 and early 1914.

The first tranche of vessels to fulfill this requirement, the Gazelle class, were designed to serve both as fleet scouts and as station ships in Germany's colonial empire.

[5] Bremen was ordered under the contract name "L"[b] and was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in the ship's namesake city on 1 August 1902 and was launched on 9 July 1903.

Trials were completed on 15 July and Bremen was scheduled to be decommissioned, but the naval command instead decided to send her to replace the light cruiser Gazelle on a deployment to the American Station.

[3][6] After making preparations for her deployment in Kiel, she left the port on 27 August and crossed the Atlantic, stopping in Funchal on the island of Madeira en route to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, arriving there on 25 September.

By this time, the dispute with Venezuela that had prompted the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903 between that country and Britain, Germany, and Italy had been settled, so she was no longer needed to enforce the settlement.

On 15 March, the division was dissolved and Bremen was then classified as an individual station ship and Koch became the senior-most officer of the German vessels in the area.

For the rest of 1905, Bremen cruised in Central American waters, during which time she stopped in Veracruz, Mexico, where she was visited by members of the Mexican government.

While in Kingston, Bremen received a distress call from the Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) steamer SS Prinzessin Victoria Louise, which had run aground on a coral reef nearby.

The excellent conduct of the ship's crew during the visits to Canada prompted Kaiser Wilhelm II to issue an order recognizing the men.

She then cruised back to South American waters, and in late August assisted the Hamburg Süd (HSDG) steamer SS Cap Frio, which had run aground in the bay off Bahía Blanca.

Bremen then continued on her voyage south, stopping in Punta Arenas, Chile, on 10 November before passing through the Strait of Magellan and entered the Pacific Ocean before retracing her course back to the east coast.

She stopped in La Guaira, Venezuela, in early 1909 where now-KzS Hopman made an official visit to President Juan Vicente Gómez.

While on the way, she encountered a hurricane on the night of 29 April, and in the heavy seas, she suffered an explosion in her starboard side auxiliary engine room, which severely injured one man.

The celebrations commemorating the May Revolution ended on 30 May and Emden continued her voyage to Asia, though Bremen remained in the port until 15 June before embarking once again for the west coast of South America.

Her voyage up the western coast of the continent stopped in Callao, Peru, when Bremen once again received a change of orders on 4 September, directing her to return south to Chile to take part in celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the start of the Chilean War of Independence.

After the situation in Amapala stabilized, the ships recalled their men and Bremen departed on 13 November, bound for Puerto San José, Guatemala.

[10] While Bremen was in Rio de Janeiro on 19 March, she met the battlecruiser Von der Tann, which was then on a long-distance trials cruise to test the vessel's ability to operate at long range.

After returning to the Atlantic and steaming north off Pernambuco in Brazil on 20 December, she received orders to cross to West Africa to support the gunboats Eber and Panther during unrest in Liberia.

After arriving in Monrovia, Liberia on 25 December, but the Liberian government had begun to gain control of the situation, so Bremen was able to leave on 12 January 1913 and return to her station area, first by way of a visit to Freetown, Sierra Leone.

She visited Rio de Janeiro, where she put out the fire that had broken out aboard the HSDG steamer SS Etruska, preventing the ship's destruction.

Bremen then sailed to Saint Helena, then to Duala in the German colony of Kamerun; from there, she stopped again in Freetown and then steamed to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

[15] The ship then steamed to the coast of Mexico in response to the Mexican Revolution, which had prompted several countries to send warships to protect their nationals in the area.

She was instructed to return to her namesake city, where the mayor and the Senate of Bremen greeted the ship and held a celebration for her crew on 15 March.

She left Kiel on 2 July and arrived in Libau six days later, where she joined the Reconnaissance Unit for the Baltic Sea Command under now-Konteradmiral Hopman.

The first day of the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, 8 August, Bremen left Libau for an operation to rescue the crew of the torpedo boat T52, which had struck a naval mine and sank off Zerel on the island of Ösel.

The Reconnaissance Unit conducted further sweeps into the northern Baltic over the next week, and on 12 October Bremen towed the seaplane tender Answald free after she ran aground.

V191 struck a mine at 17:10, and Bremen moved to begin rescue operations while V186 attempted to take the damaged torpedo boat under tow.