[1] To make matters worse, Sardinia unified most of Italy later that year; the new kingdom sought Austrian territory, prompting fears of an invasion across the Adriatic Sea.

Despite the chronically tight Austrian naval budget, Archduke Ferdinand Max, the head of the navy, secured funding for two ships of the Drache class.

[3] Drache was laid down at Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino at its Trieste shipyard on 18 February 1861, launched on 9 September 1861, and completed in November 1862.

[4] During the Second Schleswig War in 1864, Drache and her sister ship Salamander remained in the Adriatic to protect Austria's coastline, while a squadron was sent to the North Sea to attack Denmark.

[6] Persano then spent the next two days bombarding the Austrian defenses of the island and unsuccessfully attempting to force a landing.

Tegetthoff received a series of telegrams between the 17 and 19 July notifying him of the Italian attack, which he initially believed to be a feint to draw the Austrian fleet away from its main bases at Pola and Venice.

During this period, Drache was hit several times; one shell struck her commander, Captain Heinrich von Moll, in the head, killing him instantly.

[13] After Re d'Italia sank, the Italian fleet began to disengage, with the badly burning Palestro trailing behind, soon to be destroyed by a magazine explosion.

Persano broke off the engagement, and though his ships still outnumbered the Austrians, he refused to counter-attack with his badly demoralized forces.

The Italian ships never came, and on 12 August, the two countries signed the Armistice of Cormons; this ended the fighting and led to the Treaty of Vienna.

[15] The two halves of the Dual Monarchy held veto power over the other, and Hungarian disinterest in naval expansion led to severely reduced budgets for the fleet.

[16] The fleet embarked on a modest modernization program after the war, primarily focused on re-arming the ironclads with new rifled guns.

The Navy attempted to sell the ship to China, but the proposed sale came to nothing, and she was eventually sold for scrap in 1883 and broken up over the following year.