A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Meteor took part in the Battle of Havana in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War.

The Camäleon-class 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.

In 1859, Prince Regent Wilhelm approved a construction program for some fifty-two gunboats to be built over the next fifteen years, of which eight became the Camäleon class.

Construction work on the ship was delayed significantly due to a lack of funding, the result of budgetary conflicts between Minister President Otto von Bismarck and the Prussian House of Representatives.

The sailors were concerned with Meteor's seaworthiness for an Atlantic crossing, and so planned to transfer the 15 cm gun to Arcona for the voyage.

En route, she had to put into Falmouth from 12 October to 6 November to repair damage sustained during a storm in the North Sea.

The gunboat was unable to stay in Barbados, as unrest in Venezuela threatened German nationals in the country, and she was ordered there to protect them.

She remained in the area until mid-March 1870; at the beginning of the month, she anchored off La Guaira with Niobe in an attempt to enforce German financial claims in the city.

[8] Bouvet departed the harbor on 8 November, followed by Meteor the following day; international law mandated that belligerent ships wait twenty-four hours after an enemy vessel left port.

[11] Bouvet attempted to ram a second time, but Meteor's gunners scored a hit on the French ship's boiler and disabled her engine.

[12] By this time, Meteor's crew had freed the propeller, and Knorr attempted to capture Bouvet, but the French sailors were able to get their ship under sail and escape to neutral Cuban waters.

Three days later, the ship departed for Germany; she sailed up the eastern coast of the United States and Canada before crossing the Atlantic.

After reaching the Mediterranean coast of Spain, she replaced the gunboat Delphin in the Cruiser Squadron under the flagship Friedrich Carl.

As tensions rose in the Balkans—which produced several uprisings against Ottoman rule, culminating in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877—Meteor was reinforced with the gunboats Nautilus and Comet and the aviso Pommerania.