In October 1888, she sailed to Nauru, where her crew formally proclaimed the German annexation of the island and disarmed its inhabitants, ending the Nauruan Civil War.

General Leo von Caprivi, who had become the head of the Kaiserliche Admiralität (Imperial Admiralty) in 1883, embarked on a construction program to modernize the fleet.

[1][a] Eber introduced a uniform appearance for German warships of the period, featuring a ram bow that bore little utility but ensured the ship would resemble the other vessels being built for the colonial fleet.

To supplement the steam engine on long voyages, the ship was fitted with a three-masted barque sailing rig with a surface area of 590 m2 (6,400 sq ft).

She was launched of 15 February 1887 and Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Wilhelm von Wickede, the commander of the Marinestation der Ostsee (Baltic Sea Naval Station), christened the vessel.

The ship sailed from Kiel on 10 November, bound for a tour in the South Pacific to relieve the gunboat Albatross and permit the corvette Olga to re-join the Cruiser Squadron elsewhere.

[8][9] After 131 days, of which 49 were spent in various ports along the way, Eber reached Cooktown, Australia; over the course of the voyage, the crew dealt with a number of accidents, including a fire in her coal bunkers.

She then sailed north Matupi Harbor in German New Guinea before proceeding on to Apia, Samoa, which was where the ship would be stationed in the midst of the Samoan crisis.

Eber's commander, Kapitänleutnant (Captain Lieutenant) Bethge, had begun to exhibit severe nervousness during the voyage from Germany, which worsened after arriving in Samoa.

The Kaiserliche Admiralität approved the measures on 7 August and ordered Bethge to return home aboard a merchant vessel; he was thereafter discharged from the navy.

Repeated attacks of Germans in December led the commander of Adler to send a landing party ashore to defend the plantation at Vailele.

A force of Samoans led by an American ambushed the Germans in the First Battle of Vailele, prompting Wallis to deploy his own landing corps to support Adler's men.

Sixteen men from the ships' crews were killed in the action, which was the heaviest defeat of the German Navy until the outbreak of World War I.

In the aftermath of the battle, the pro-American faction became increasingly aggressive, burning the German consulate and engaging in British forces on the island, which suffered significant losses.

[14] Most of the other ships in the harbor were similarly destroyed; only the British corvette HMS Calliope survived, as her captain had departed to avoid the storm.

Later that year, representatives from the United States and Britain met in Berlin to discuss a solution to the crisis, resulting in a shared supervisory arrangement between the three countries in the Treaty of Berlin, though this would not prove satisfactory in the long run, and following the start of the Second Samoan Civil War, the islands were formally partitioned into American and German colonies in the Tripartite Convention of 1899.