SMS Salamander was a Drache-class armored frigate built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the 1860s; she was laid down in February 1861, launched in August that year, and completed in May 1862, six months before her sister Drache.

Little used thereafter owing to reduced naval budgets, she was stricken from the Navy List in 1883 and hulked for use as a mine storage ship before being broken up in 1895–1896.

[1] To make matters worse, Sardinia unified most of Italy later that year; the new kingdom sought Austrian territory, prompting fears of an invasion across the Adriatic Sea.

Despite the chronically tight Austrian naval budget, Archduke Ferdinand Max, the head of the navy, secured funding for two ships of the Drache class.

[3] Salamander was laid down at Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino at its Trieste shipyard in February 1861, launched on 20 or 22 August 1861, and completed in May 1862, some six months before her sister ship Drache.

[3][4] During the Second Schleswig War in 1864, Salamander and Drache remained in the Adriatic to protect Austria's coastline, while a squadron was sent to the North Sea to attack Denmark.

Tegetthoff received a series of telegrams between the 17 and 19 July notifying him of the Italian attack, which he initially believed to be a feint to draw the Austrian fleet away from its main bases at Pola and Venice.

[11] Salamander and the other two ships of the left wing, Habsburg and Kaiser Max, attacked the leading Italian division, composed of the ironclads Principe di Carignano, Castelfidardo, and Ancona.

[13] By this time, Re d'Italia had been sunk and the coastal defense ship Palestro was burning badly, soon to be destroyed by a magazine explosion.

The Italian ships never came, and on 12 August, the two countries signed the Armistice of Cormons; this ended the fighting and led to the Treaty of Vienna.

[17] The two halves of the Dual Monarchy held veto power over the other, and Hungarian disinterest in naval expansion led to severely reduced budgets for the fleet.

[18] The fleet embarked on a modest modernization program after the war, primarily focused on re-arming the ironclads with new rifled guns.

[4] In 1869, Salamander was assigned to a squadron sent to patrol the Levant in the eastern Mediterranean under the command of Rear Admiral Friedrich von Pöck.