SMS Gneisenau
"Gneisenau" was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen, Germany in 1904, under construction number 144. She was launched on 14 June 1906, and commissioned into the fleet nearly two years later on 6 March 1908. The ship cost the German government 19,243,000 goldmarks. The ship had been designed for service with the High Seas Fleet, though it was found to be too weak for service with the battle fleet; instead it was deployed overseas, a role in which it performed well.
German battleship Gneisenau
On 15 March, the two battleships, with the two tankers in company, encountered a dispersed convoy in the mid-Atlantic. "Gneisenau" captured three tankers and sank a fourth, totaling 20,139 GRT of shipping. The next day, stragglers from a convoy were sighted. "Gneisenau" sank seven ships for 26,693 GRT, while her sister accounted for six vessels for . One of the surviving ships radioed the location of the German battleships, which summoned the powerful British battleships "Rodney" and . "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" used their high speed to escape in a squall, and the intervention by the British battleships convinced Lütjens that the chances of further success were small. He therefore decided to head for Brest in occupied France, which the ships reached on 22 March. She then entered drydock for periodic maintenance.