Originally intended for use in Chinese waters against local pirates, she instead remained in Germany through her career as a training ship.

In the mid-1870s, Germany stationed four to ten warships in the Pacific, in part to combat piracy in Chinese waters, but all were larger corvettes or ocean-going gunboats.

[1][2] Schichau had done the design work on a speculative basis, before the contract had been awarded, and the ship was acquired outside the normal process that required the navy to adhere to the fleet plan that Albrecht von Stosch had laid out in 1872.

Her propulsion system was rated to provide a top speed of 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph) at 140 metric horsepower (140 ihp).

To supplement the steam engines on longer voyages, she was fitted with a two-masted schooner rig with a total sail area of 325 m2 (3,500 sq ft).

Otter's poor seaworthiness was quickly realized, and a planned transfer from Elbing to Wilhelmshaven on Germany's North Sea coast, which was to have taken the ship around Denmark, had to be cancelled.

Otter was drawn into the controversy between the Chief of the Admiralty, General Albrecht von Stosch, and the Reichstag (Imperial Diet), which had begun with the sinking of the ironclad Grosser Kurfürst in 1878.

On 16 July 1880, several deck planks were damaged during shooting practice, which led to the ship being disarmed.

This made Otter not only the smallest warship ever to sail under the Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag), but the only one capable of firing just salutes.

[1] Otter was recommissioned on 11 July 1887 to be transferred from Wilhelmshaven to Kiel in the Baltic Sea to join the Ship Inspection Commission.

Unlike her initial period in service, this time, Otter's crew made the voyage through the North Sea and around Denmark.

She was sold to a company in Brake, Lower Saxony on 11 February 1914, and which resold Otter to Anschütz & Co. in Kiel later that year.