List of ships of the Imperial German Navy

The list of ships of the Imperial Navy includes the warships of the German Imperial Navy (1871-1918), in so far as they carried a name. Units that have only one number as identification are performed in separate lists. Support vessels, which did not have a military command, no mention here.

The sorting of the ships is arranged alphabetically by the conferred at the launching or the assumption of the Navy name. Subsequent name changes, as long as they were made during the period of service in the Imperial Navy, are " whereabouts " noted. A repeated mention of a ship under different names omitted.

For each ship the ship type is specified. These designations changed several times during the history of the Imperial Navy. At the end of 1884 were the ships called corvettes flush deck until then re- run as a cruiser corvettes, while the Covered corvettes were henceforth referred to as cruisers frigates. 1893 there was a further change, both the ironclads and the cruiser were divided into four classes. A final reclassification was made in 1899 in connection with the adoption of the First Fleet Act. The majority of the ironclads, with the exception of the run as coastal defense ships ironclads IV class were reclassified as battleships. The cruiser class I and part of II class cruisers and battleships were grouped together for the type of the Great cruiser, the remaining cruisers II class cruiser III. and IV class and the Avisos formed the type of light cruiser.

The accurate reproduction of all type classifications for each ship is beyond the scope of this list. Therefore find the typings of the 1884 and 1899 application, the older name is given priority, a ship should have to go through both schemes. For example, the units of the Sachsen- class were classified in 1884 as ironclads and 1899 as ships of the line, but are referred to in this list as ironclads. Only for ships that were filed before or shortly after the reorganization in 1884, out of service or in a separate group, for example, the training ships, transferred, the old type of speech is used. For built in the years 1893-1898 ironclads and cruisers valid from 1899 designations. Exceptions are the ships of the swallow and Bussard class, which were built partly already before 1893 and originally known as vehicle class IV. This name was also found in this list do not use the ships are instead called according to the classification of 1899 as a small cruiser. Even with the units of the Albatross and the hawk class used the 1884-1893 term cruiser is not applied because they were classified both before and after this period as gunboats.

Furthermore, for each vessel, if it is not an Assumed merchant ship, the class specified at which the vessel concerned belongs. The classes are usually named after the way past first batch ship. Vessels belonging to any class will be marked as a single ship.

The type of Indienststellungsjahres refers to the acquisition in the Imperial Navy. For ships that were built before the Empire and put into service, it has referred to the takeover in the Empire fleet, the Prussian navy or the navy of the North German Confederation relates. The civilian commissioning of merchant ships that were particularly seized during the First World War by the Imperial Navy and used as auxiliary vessels, is not included in this list.

The indication of the displacement takes place in metric tons. Indicated is the weight of the fully equipped ship. In a few cases, this had not yet been determined; especially with some of the auxiliary ships are only information in gross registered tons. Since this but is a measure of space and not a weight, is without any representation of this information.

Units of the Imperial Navy with no name

• List of German U- boats (1906-1919)
• List of German torpedo boats (1871-1919)
• German torpedo boats Big List (1898-1919)
• List of coastal torpedo boats of the A-Class