SMS Panther was one of six Iltis-class gunboats built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

Panther, along with Eber, was armed with a main battery of two 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns, had a top speed of 13.5 knots (25.0 km/h; 15.5 mph), and could cruise for 3,400 nautical miles (6,300 km; 3,910 mi).

[2][4] Panther, named after the eponymous cat genus, was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Shipyard) in Danzig in July 1900.

On the order of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Panther was sent along with the dispatch boat Sleipner to represent the Imperial Navy at the industrial and commercial exhibition in Düsseldorf [de].

After departing, Panther stopped for two days in Duisburg, before arriving back in Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast on 13 July.

She arrived in Saint Thomas in the Danish West Indies on 30 August, where she joined the flagship of the station, the protected cruiser Vineta.

The rebels, who controlled the gunboat Crête-à-Pierrot, seized the German HAPAG steamer SS Markomannia, which was carrying a shipment of weapons to the Haitian government.

On 6 September, Panther located Crête-à-Pierrot in Gonaïves; she fired a warning shot that prompted most of the crew to abandon ship, but Admmiral Hammerton Killick remained board.

[6] By this time, tensions between Venezuela and Britain, Germany, and Italy had risen significantly over measures that the Venezuelan president, Cipriano Castro, had imposed to try to suppress a rebellion, including a blockade of several coastal cities.

No incidents involving German ships materialized, however, but the European powers concluded an agreement on 1 December to put an end to the blockade.

The Europeans nevertheless requested the United States to arbitrate a settlement, which resulted in an agreement that Venezuela would receive all of the naval and civilian vessels that had been seized in return for resuming debt payments.

From there, she sailed to Newport News, Virginia, in the United States for an overhaul,[6] along with permanent repairs to her main battery guns to correct the deficiencies originally identified during the action with Crête-à-Pierrot.

On 19 October, the ship sailed to Willemstad, Curaçao, to assist the HAPAG steamer SS Graecia, which had run aground while attempting to help a British vessel.

[15] On 15 March 1905, the naval command disbanded the East American Cruiser Division, leaving Panther to patrol the region by herself.

Panther arrived back in the Caribbean by mid-May, and she thereafter returned to Canadian waters; this time, she sailed into the St. Lawrence River to visit Montreal, Canada.

On 21 December, Panther and the light cruiser Bremen sailed to Kingston, Jamaica, to try to rescue the wrecked HAPAG steamer Prinzessin Victoria Luise, but they were unsuccessful.

In early July 1907, Panther received orders to transfer to the West African station; she departed the region on 5 August and began the voyage across the Atlantic, arriving in Las Palmas on 3 September.

[16] After arriving in western African waters in early September, Panther toured ports along the coast on the way to Douala in the German colony of Kamerun.

She embarked a detachment of surveyors in November to carry out mapping of the coastline of Germany's west African colonies, a project that had lain dormant since the recall of the gunboat Wolf in 1905.

Panther spent much of the next four years surveying the coast, interrupted generally only by annual maintenance and overhaul periods in Cape Town, South Africa.

[17] In early 1911, Panther left southern African waters and arrived in Douala on 28 May; there, she received orders to return home for a thorough overhaul.

[18] The Foreign Office intended the visit to pressure France for concessions elsewhere, but justified the stop under the pretext of protection German nationals in the port; in fact, the only German—Hermann Wilberg—arrived in Agadir three days after Panther reached the city.

[19] The presence of the gunboat in Morocco, which was then nominally independent but the subject of Spanish and French attempts to colonize the country, sparked the Agadir Crisis and triggered a major war scare in Europe.

In April, she visited Groß Friedrichsburg again, and her crew discovered old Prussian artillery barrels, which were shipped back to Germany with permission of the local British colonial authorities.

[21] In November 1912, unrest broke out in Monrovia, Liberia, prompting Panther to sail there to protect German nationals in the city.

She temporarily embarked a group of farmers and businessmen during the crisis, which worsened and led to the Germans sending Eber and the light cruiser Bremen to reinforce Panther.

The ship was not deployed abroad, however, as Europe was already embroiled in the July Crisis following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo the previous month.

On 23 August, Panther took the U-boat U-3 under tow to the island of Gotland, from which the submarine was to sortie into the Gulf of Finland to attack Russian vessels.

[22] Beginning in January 1915, Panther began patrolling the area off Aarøsund, where she remained until autumn that year, when she moved back to the Little Belt.