To supplement the steam engine on long voyages abroad, she carried a full-ship rig with a total surface area of 2,200 m2 (24,000 sq ft).

Gazelle was intended to be deployed to the Black Sea in 1863—a right extended to several European powers after the Crimean War on 1853–1856—diplomatic events in East Asia saw these plans changed.

The Eulenburg expedition, carried out aboard the frigate Arcona, had resulted in the signing of treaties with Siam, Qing China, and Japan.

Japan demanded that a proper warship return to complete the ratification purpose, and Gazelle was chosen for the mission.

By 21 November, she had reached Gibraltar, where the crew visited a recently erected monument to the Prussian sailors who had died in the Battle of Tres Forcas in 1856.

While still in Gibraltar in December, Heldt was replaced by KK Arthur von Bothwell, who was to captain the ship for the rest of the cruise.

Gazelle got underway again in late January 1863, sailing initially west to Brazil, arriving in Rio de Janeiro in February.

Gazelle thereafter sailed back across the Atlantic, passing the Cape of Good Hope, stopping in Anjer on the island of Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies, before arriving in Singapore on 31 May.

The British squadron left Yokohama the day that Gazelle arrived; the city had a significant European settlement, and several French warships took responsibility for defending it, sending some 300 men ashore with field guns.

The French commander requested that Bothwell support them, so Gazelle contributed a landing party of 107 men and two 12-pounder guns to reinforce the garrison.

Later that day, after the Prussian ambassador Max von Brandt arrived, Gazelle sailed from Tokyo, stopping in Yokohama and Nagasaki on the way to Shanghai, where she stayed from 8 March to 6 April.

[9] While in Shanghai, Bothwell learned of the start of the Second Schleswig War between Prussia and Denmark; he received orders to begin cruiser warfare against Danish merchant shipping.

She then moved to Xiamen, China, before capturing the Danish schooner Chin-Chin; Bothwell was unaware that an armistice had ended the fighting in the Second Schleswig War.

[10] Gazelle next recommissioned on 3 April 1866, as was with the Austrian Empire appeared to be imminent; the fleet received its mobilization orders on 12 May shortly before the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War.

The Prussian fleet assembled a squadron at Kiel commanded by Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Eduard von Jachmann, which Gazelle joined.

During a training cruise conducted in the western Baltic Sea later that year, a man went overboard, and a young naval cadet Alfred von Tirpitz nearly drowned in his attempt to rescue the sailor.

By 8 March, she had arrived in Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire, where she loaded relief supplies to be carried to the island of Lesbos, which had recently been struck by a major earthquake.

The French attempted to blockade the north German coasts, but withdrew having achieved little before the war was decided at the Battle of Sedan.

The German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, informed the United States government of the ship's activities to assuage concerns that Germany sought to claim a colony in the country.

The astronomical side was handled by Karl Börgen and Ladislaus Weinek, with the aim of studying the transit of Venus on December 9, 1874 at Kerguelen.