SMS Gneisenau
SMS "Gneisenau" was an armored cruiser of the German navy, part of the two-ship . She was named after August von Gneisenau, a Prussian general of the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was laid down in 1904 at the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and completed in March 1908, at a cost of over 19 million goldmarks. She was armed with a main battery of eight guns, had a top speed of , and displaced at full combat load.
SMS Gneisenau (1879)
On 18 September, she left Kiel once again for another overseas cruise, stopping in Dartmouth on the way through the English Channel. She toured ports in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, stopping in Málaga on 13 November, where she remained for nearly a month. On 10 December, she left the port to begin shooting exercises; she moored off the mole, some from shore, where the exercises were held. At around 10:30 on 16 December, the weather off Málaga worsened considerably, with force 8 winds. The ship's commander, "KzS" Kretschmann, ordered the crew to raise steam in the boilers so the ship could be moved into the safety of the harbor, and thirty minutes later a miscommunication between the engine room personnel and the captain led to Kretschmann ordering the anchors raised so the ship could get underway. The commander believed the engine room had reported 50 revolutions per minute (rpm) on the propeller shaft, but the actual figure was 15 rpm, not sufficient to propel the ship. As a result, the now-unmoored ship drifted helplessly in the heavy winds.