Through the 1870s and early 1880s, Germany built two types of cruising vessels: small, fast avisos suitable for service as fleet scouts and larger, long-ranged screw corvettes capable of patrolling the German colonial empire.

General Leo von Caprivi, the Chief of the Imperial Admiralty, sought to modernize Germany's cruiser force.

Her propulsion system consisted of two horizontal 3-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines that drove a pair of screw propellers.

[3] The ship was armed with a main battery of eight 10.5 cm (4.1 in) SK L/35 quick-firing (QF) guns in single pedestal mounts, supplied with 800 rounds of ammunition in total.

[5] On 16 October, Cormoran and her newly commissioned sister ship Condor left Germany, bound for East Africa.

In July, Condor arrived there to replace Cormoran; the latter was now free to return to her original deployment to East Asian waters.

Following completion of the repair work, Cormoran cruised to Basra via the Shatt al-Arab, where she paid visits to the local German consul and Turkish authorities.

[5] On 13 September 1895, Cormoran arrived in Singapore and joined the East Asia Division under the command of Rear Admiral Hoffmann, who flew his flag in the armored cruiser SMS Kaiser.

The tense political situation in German Samoa prompted the Admiralstab (Admiralty Staff) to send Cormoran to reinforce her sisters Bussard and Falke there.

[5] While en route to Samoa on the night of 23–24 March 1899, Cormoran ran aground on the Whirlwind Reef, north of the western tip of New Pomerania.

The ship's commander, Korvettenkapitän Hugo Emsmann, sent the steam pinnace and a dinghy with two officers and eleven men, towing a load of coal, to Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen, some 162 nautical miles (300 km; 186 mi) away.

Emsmann then decided to remove all unnecessary coal and ammunition—some of which was put ashore and the rest simply thrown overboard—to cut away the fore and mainmast, and to move the stern guns forward.

While on the return journey to Samoa, Cormoran was sent to the St Matthias Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago, where a German researcher named Mencke had been murdered, along with his assistant.

On 28 July, Cormoran had returned to Apia, and through November, the ship was occupied with survey work and trips to the other islands.

[8] While in Malta on 8 June 1909, she received orders to proceed to Asia Minor, where unrest in Turkey and violence against Armenians was prompting German intervention.

After reaching the Pacific, she began coastal survey work, and her landing party led a punitive expedition against cannibals in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland.

On 3 November, she took part in a flag raising ceremony in Blanche Bay commemorating the German possession of New Pomerania.

Three days later, her crew participated in the groundbreaking ceremony for a Bismarck tower in Toma, a town southwest of the capital, Herbertshöhe.

They arrived on 19 December and operated in the area until 22 February, with Cormoran, Emden and Nürnberg landing shore parties in support of Polizei-Soldaten (a force of police officers) deployed from German New Guinea.

Cormoran was reclassified as a gunboat on 24 February 1913 by order of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office).

[11] As the political situation in Europe worsened in July 1914, the senior officer in Tsingtau at the time, Fregattenkapitän (Frigate Captain) Karl von Müller, the commander of Emden, ordered the repair work to Cormoran to be accelerated.

After the outbreak of war in early August, Emden captured the Russian steamer Ryazan and brought her back to Tsingtau.

Much of her weaponry was removed to strengthen the shore defenses at Tsingtau on 6 August 1914 to protect the concession from British attack.