SMS Scorpion was a steam gunboat of the Jäger class built for the Prussian Navy in the late 1850s and early 1860s.
The ship was ordered as part of a program to strengthen Prussia's coastal defense forces, then oriented against neighboring Denmark.
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.
[2] Named after both the eponymous arachnids and the constellation Scorpius, Scorpion was completed in late 1860 and immediately sent to the island of Dänholm near Stralsund, where she was laid up in reserve.
She was commissioned on 26 June 1861 to join a gunboat flotilla,[4] which included Camäleon, Comet, Jäger, Salamander, and Fuchs for 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.
[8] The flotilla was deployed to support Captain Eduard von Jachmann's corvettes as they attempted to break the Danish blockade, but the gunboats were only lightly engaged.
Nevertheless, as the Danish steam frigate Tordenskjold arrived to reinforce the main squadron, Scorpion and the other gunboats fired on her from afar.
As the Danes continued south in pursuit of Jachmann's ships, the gunboats withdrew back to Stralsund, though they had to take Hay under tow after her engines broke down.
[4] The ship next recommissioned in early 1866 as tensions between Prussia and the Austrian Empire rose prior to the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War.
The unit, led by Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Eduard Heldt [de], also included the artillery training ship Renown and the gunboats Cyclop, Camäleon, Habicht, and Scorpion.
In September, French warships left the Baltic, and Scorpion spent the rest of the war assisting merchant shipping in the area and preventing them from running into the minefield.