[1] The ship was powered by a single 2-cylinder, vertical marine steam engine that drove a screw propeller.

The ship was ostensibly a reconstruction of the earlier corvette Donau, but this was a legal fiction to conceal the construction of a new warship not authorized by parliament.

[1] In 1896, Donau embarked Archduke Franz Ferdinand for a convalescent cruise to Egypt; at the time, the ship's captain was Leodegar Kneissler, who would go on to serve as the deputy commander of the Austro-Hungarian Navy under Rudolf Montecuccoli.

After arriving in Chinese waters in the spring of 1901, Haus transferred to the armored cruiser Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia and Donau continued on.

She remained in the fleet's inventory through World War I, and was ceded to the new Royal Yugoslav Navy in 1920, where she was renamed Sibenik.