SMS Pommerania was a paddle steamer originally built for use as a packet ship but was acquired by the North German Federal Navy in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. Commissioned too late to see service during the conflict, she was initially used to conduct fishery surveys that were later used as the basis for the German Fisheries Act in 1874. Pommerania went to the Mediterranean Sea in 1876 in response to the murder of a German diplomat and remained in the region to observe the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. After returning to Germany in 1879, she spent much of the 1880s either operating as a fishery protection vessel or conducting surveys of the German coastline. Decommissioned in 1889, she was struck from the naval register in 1890, sold in 1892, and was converted into a sailing scho