SMS Hyäne was the second member of the Wolf class of steam gunboats built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the 1870s.

The ship was ordered as part of a construction program intended to begin replacing the old Jäger-class gunboats that had been built a decade earlier.

Unlike the older ships, Hyäne was intended to serve abroad to protect German economic interests overseas.

During this period, Hyäne operated in Kamerun in Central Africa and routinely supported efforts to suppress rebellions against German rule.

The two Albatross-class gunboats and the rebuilt Cyclop were too few for the task of patrolling the Far East, so another three vessels were ordered according to the fleet plan that had been approved in 1872.

[4][5] Hyäne was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Wilhelmshaven in November 1876, under the contract name Ersatz (Replacement) Scorpion.

[4][6] On 8 October, Hyäne sailed to join the ironclad corvette Hansa in South America, which was stationed on the continent's west coast to protect German interests during the War of the Pacific between Chile and an alliance between Peru and Bolivia.

By that time, the situation had calmed sufficiently that Hyäne was no longer needed in the area, and Heusner detached the ship to cross the Pacific to Samoa.

Not long thereafter, the screw frigate Hertha and the gunboats Habicht and Möwe had arrived in Samoa, allowing Hyäne to return home as well.

From there, she sailed to Easter Island, which was not well known in Europe at the time; this was at the suggestion of Dr. Adolf Bastian, and ethnographer and head of the Altes Museum in Berlin.

The following month, she departed south for another period in Auckland, which lasted from 22 March to 29 April, after which she relieved Carola as the station ship in Apia.

[8] In early 1884, the German government decided to embark on establishing its colonial empire in the Pacific, rather than simply allowing commercial interests to act independently.

In late October, Hyäne and the screw frigate Elisabeth were ordered to tour the region, raise German flags at key points, and conduct geographic surveys.

In early 1885, the screw corvette Marie ran aground off the island of Neu-Mecklenburg and Hyäne was sent to assist the grounded vessel.

[9] In September, Hyäne was detached from the south Pacific to join the East Africa Cruiser Squadron, then led by the corvette Bismarck.

On 18 January 1886, she sailed to Port Louis on the island of Mauritius to rest her crew, but a fever epidemic broke out, which prevented the ship from leaving until 3 May.

On 9 January, she departed in company with the corvettes Olga and Carola to Manda Bay (in what is now Kenya) to enforce a German protectorate over the area.

Hyäne carried a surveying detachment to explore the recently acquired colony of Kamerun, particularly in the estuary of the Wouri River.

This work was interrupted after locals attacked Germans in the town of Bibundi, which prompted Hyäne to sail there and send a landing party ashore.

The ship later sailed to Cape Town for an overhaul, and she was back off Kamerun by mid-October, when she sent a landing party ashore to support the Schutztruppe (Protection Force) that was battling rebels in the colony.

In January 1893, she sent her landing party ashore in Buea for the inauguration of a memorial to the explorer Karl von Gravenreuth, who had died during an expedition in Kamerun.

Later that year, a police unit that had been recruited from Dahomey mutinied, prompting Hyäne to send her landing party to suppress it.

In April that year, the ship was sent to survey the Adlergrund, where the pre-dreadnought battleship Kaiser Friedrich III had been badly damaged after striking an uncharted rock.

[13] After the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, Hyäne ceased survey work and became a guard ship in the mouth of the Eider river.

She filled this role for two years, before returning to survey work in June 1916, briefly in the North Sea but soon moving to the Baltic.

As German forces made advances against the Russians in the Eastern Front, the ship's activities shifted east, including the areas around Libau, Windau, and then Arensburg.

Shortly after the German defeat in the war, Hyäne was decommissioned on 3 December 1918, seemingly bringing an end to a career that had spanned nearly forty years.