As built, the ship was armed with a main battery of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph).

Irene saw extensive service with the German fleet in the first years of her career, frequently escorting Kaiser Wilhelm II's yacht on cruises throughout Europe.

In 1894, she was deployed to East Asian waters; she was in dock for engine maintenance in November 1897 when Otto von Diederichs seized the naval base Jiaozhou Bay, and so she was not present during the operation.

In 1883, General Leo von Caprivi became the Chief of the Imperial Admiralty, and at the time, the pressing question that confronted all of the major navies was what type of cruiser to build to replace the obsolete rigged screw corvettes that had been built in the 1860s and 1870s.

Cruisers could be optimized for service with the main fleet or for deployments abroad, and while the largest navies could afford to build dedicated ships of each type, Germany could not.

[2] The ship was armed with a main battery of four 15 cm RK L/30 guns in single pedestal mounts, supplied with 400 rounds of ammunition in total.

[7][5] Shortly after the ship's keel laying, the navy decided that she would be named after Princess Irene, the wife of Prince Heinrich.

She was commissioned to begin sea trials on 25 May 1888,[8] which were interrupted that summer when Irene joined the fleet that steamed to Great Britain to celebrate the ascension of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The fleet then held training maneuvers in the North Sea under command of Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Friedrich von Hollmann.

On 10 September, she went on another overseas cruise, this time to the Mediterranean Sea, where she met the Training Squadron, which was escorting the Kaiser's yacht Hohenzollern.

The ships then visited Greece, to represent Germany at the ceremonies surrounding the marriage of Wilhelm's sister Sophie to Prince Constantine on 28 October.

From there, the ships sailed to Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, where Heinrich and Wilhelm visited Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

[1][9][10] After returning, Irene was repainted white (instead of the normal black paint German warships received at the time), as she was to spend much of the rest of the year escorting Wilhelm's yacht.

In late June, the two ships sailed to Helsingør, Denmark, where Wilhelm met the Danish king, Christian IX.

[12][13] The outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War in June 1894 led the major European powers to strengthen their forces in East Asia.

[15] She then proceeded on to Asian waters to join the German squadron; upon arrival in Chefoo on 14 February 1895, she became the flagship of KAdm Paul Hoffmann.

By that time, Japanese forces had completed their conquest of Formosa, permitting Irene to steam to the city of Taipei to withdraw her landing party.

By that time, the Philippine Revolution had broken out against the Spanish colonial government, and the major powers had taken a keen interest on developments in the islands.

Tirpitz determined that the fighting did not threaten German interests in the colony, and so he departed with Irene in January 1897, returning to Hong Kong.

While the division was visiting Japan, Tirpitz received orders to return home to become the new State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Naval Office).

[20] In June 1897, Otto von Diederichs arrived in Asia to command the Cruiser Division; he first took the squadron to visit ports in northern Japan.

[23] In the meantime, Diederichs had completed the seizure of the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory; the Cruiser Division was sent reinforcements and promoted to the East Asia Squadron.

On 5 July, Diederichs dispatched Irene to survey Subic Bay and to evacuate any German nationals in the area that were threatened by Filipino insurgents.

Irene relieved Arcona in Qingdao in the Jiaozhou concession, which was in turn ordered to steam to the Caroline and Mariana Islands to observe the American capture of Guam.

Bendemann ordered his squadron, less Irene, which was to remain behind to guard Qingdao, to meet the ships of the British China Station off Taku at the mouth of the Hai River.

The expedition was attacked and defeated on the way to Beijing and was forced to withdraw to Tianjin; twelve men from Irene were killed during the operation.

According to the historians Hans Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, and Hans-Otto Steinmetz,[32] and Erich Gröner, Irene was modernized at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Wilhelmshaven from 1903 to 1905.

[3] But the historian Dirk Nottelmann, writing in 2023, states that earlier publications were incorrect, and the modernization was only carried out for Prinzess Wilhelm, not Irene.