SMS Sperber (1860)

Summary

SMS Sperber 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. She was armed with a battery of three guns. The ship saw very little activity during her career. She was activated during the Second Schleswig War against Denmark in 1864 and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, being used to defend the Prussian coast. She saw no action against enemy forces in either conflict, however. Sperber was used intermittently as a tender in the 1870s, and was struck from the naval register in 1878. She was then used as a barge in Kiel, but her eventual fate is unknown.