SMS Prinz Adalbert (1901)

SMS Prinz Adalbert (1901).
SMS Prinz Adalbert was an armored cruiser built in the early 1900s for the German Kaiserliche Marine, and was named after Prince Adalbert of Prussia, the former commander-in-chief of the Prussian Navy. Her class included a second ship, Friedrich Carl. Prinz Adalbert was built at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel. Her keel was laid in April 1900 and she was commissioned on 12 January 1904. She served as a gunnery training ship and made several visits to foreign countries. After the outbreak of World War I in July 1914 she served in the Baltic Sea, and after her sister ship was sunk in November 1914, she became the flagship of a cruiser squadron in the Baltic, conducting operations against Russian forces. She was torpedoed twice by British submarines in 1915. On the second occasion she sank quickly with heavy loss of life; from a crew of 675 men, only 3 were rescued. This was the worst German naval disaster in the Baltic during the war. (This article is part of a featured topic: Armored cruisers of Germany.)