The ship was ordered as part of a program to strengthen Prussia's coastal defense forces, then oriented against neighboring Denmark.

Jäger next recommissioned at the start of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and was stationed in the mouth of the Elbe river, but she saw no combat with French forces.

The Jäger class of gunboats came about as a result of a program to strengthen the Prussian Navy in the late 1850s in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Reichsflotte and in the midst of rising tensions with Denmark.

The ships departed for a training cruise that included a visit to Skagen in Denmark and the free imperial cities of Hamburg and Bremen.

On 8 December 1863, the Prussian Navy ordered the fleet to mobilize, as tensions between Prussia and Denmark over the Schleswig–Holstein question rose sharply.

She was assigned to III Flotilla Division, under the command of Leutnant zur See (Lieutenant at Sea) Johann-Heinrich Pirner.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Jasmund in mid-March, Prince Adalbert, the Prussian naval commander, ordered all five gunboat divisions to concentrate at Stralsund on 29 March to support the Prussian Army's invasion of the island of Als, but bad weather prevented the vessels from taking part in the operation.

Commanded by LzS Gustav Stempel, she was deployed to the mouth of the Elbe river to defend the area against French warships, but she saw no action during the conflict.

She was initially used as a target ship in Wilhelmshaven, but was later converted into a coal storage hulk, a role she filled until the early 1880s, when she was broken up.