Death in a typhoon

The creation of the S.M.S. FRAUENLOB was largely due to a Berlin "women's association". In 1860, the schooner sank in a storm off Japan.

Everything had actually started quite well. After the need for a navy to protect the German coast became apparent during the First Schleswig-Holstein War, various patriotic institutions had successfully campaigned for the construction of warships. From today's perspective, the fact that the initiative to acquire a warship came from the Berlin-Potsdam Women's Association was remarkable and decisive for the creation of the FRAUENLOB. As early as the first year of the war, it published an appeal for donations in the local press and was able to raise a considerable sum. This was subsequently supplemented by funds from the town of Wolgast and the Wolgast Committee for the Construction of National Warships, so that with the help of the Prussian Ministry of War, a two-masted, wooden gaff war schooner based on the Dutch model could be laid down in 1851. The ship, built at the Lübke shipyard in Wolgast, was not launched until 24 August 1855 due to various complaints. There was also no official christening ceremony, but Prince Adalbert of Prussia, Admiral of the Prussian Coast and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, was present at the launching. His cousin, King Frederick William IV, also personally intervened in the proceedings. Mindful of the female involvement that had made the financing of the schooner possible, he arranged for the originally planned name FRAUENGABE to be changed to FRAUENLOB and the ship was launched under this name in Danzig on 1 March 1856.