SMS Siegfried
SMS was the lead ship of the six-member of coastal defense ships () built for the German Imperial Navy. Her sister ships were , , , , and . was built by the Germaniawerft shipyard between 1888 and 1890, and was armed with a main battery of three guns. She served in the German fleet throughout the 1890s and was rebuilt in 1903 - 1904. She served in the VI Battle Squadron after the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, but saw no action. was demobilized in 1915 and used as a barracks ship thereafter. She was ultimately broken up for scrap in 1920. Design In the late 1880s, the German (Imperial Navy) grappled with the problem of what type of capital ship to build in the face of limited naval budgets (owing to parliamentary objections to naval spending and the cost of dredging the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal). General Leo von Caprivi, the new (Chief of the Admiralty), requested a series of design proposals, which ranged in size from small coastal defense ships to heavily armed ocean-going battleships. Caprivi ordered ten coastal defense ships to guard the entrances to the canal, since even opponents of the navy in