Episode 1173
SMS Medusa (1864)
Mon, 2020-Jul-20 00:21 UTC
Length - 2:51
Direct Link
Welcome to random Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a random Wikipedia page every day.
The random article for Monday, 20 July 2020 is SMS Medusa (1864).
SMS Medusa was a steam corvette built for the Prussian Navy in the 1860s. She was the second and final member of the Nymphe class, ordered as part of a naval expansion program to counter the Danish Navy over the disputed ownership of Schleswig and Holstein. Medusa was laid down in February 1862, was launched in October 1864, and was completed in September 1865. She had one sister ship, Nymphe, and the vessels were wooden-hulled ships armed with a battery of sixteen guns.
Medusa went on two major overseas cruises during her career, the first to the Mediterranean Sea in 1867–1868 during the Cretan Revolt against Ottoman rule. The second, lengthier voyage lasted from 1868 to 1871, and centered on operations in East Asia. There, she protected individuals from the German states in Japan during the final stage of the Boshin War, helped to suppress Chinese pirates, and visited numerous ports to show the flag. After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Medusa was trapped in Yokohama, Japan by a French squadron blockading the port; as a result, she saw no action during the conflict.
After returning to unified Germany in 1872, Medusa was converted into a training ship, a role she filled for the next eight years. During this period, she went on a number of training cruises, both in the Baltic Sea and longer voyages to North, Central, and South America, as well as the Mediterranean. She helped to monitor tensions in the Balkans in the mid-1870s and helped to secure restitution for the murder of a German diplomat in Salonika. Worn out by 1880 and in need of a thorough overhaul, the navy instead decided to remove the ship from service, using her as a hulk until 1891, when she was sold for scrap.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:21 UTC on Monday, 20 July 2020.
For the full current version of the article, see SMS Medusa (1864) on Wikipedia.
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This has been Joanna Neural. Thank you for listening to random Wiki of the Day.
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