| rdfs:comment | - SMS König Wilhelm (King William) was an armored frigate of the Prussian and later the German Imperial Navy. The ship was laid down in 1865 at the Thames Ironworks shipyard in London, originally under the name Fatikh for the Ottoman Empire. She was purchased by Prussia in February 1867, launched in April 1868, and commissioned into the Prussian Navy in February 1869. The ship was the fifth ironclad ordered by the Prussian Navy, after Arminius, Prinz Adalbert, Friedrich Carl, and Kronprinz. She was built as an armored frigate, armed with a main battery of sixteen and five guns; several smaller guns and torpedo tubes were added later in her career.
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| abstract | - SMS König Wilhelm (King William) was an armored frigate of the Prussian and later the German Imperial Navy. The ship was laid down in 1865 at the Thames Ironworks shipyard in London, originally under the name Fatikh for the Ottoman Empire. She was purchased by Prussia in February 1867, launched in April 1868, and commissioned into the Prussian Navy in February 1869. The ship was the fifth ironclad ordered by the Prussian Navy, after Arminius, Prinz Adalbert, Friedrich Carl, and Kronprinz. She was built as an armored frigate, armed with a main battery of sixteen and five guns; several smaller guns and torpedo tubes were added later in her career. The ship was for a time the largest and most powerful warship in the German navy; she served as its flagship during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–1871, though engine troubles prevented the ship from seeing action. In 1878, the ship accidentally rammed and sank the ironclad Grosser Kurfürst, with great loss of life. König Wilhelm was converted into an armored cruiser in 1895–1896; by early 1904, however, she had been superseded by newer vessels. In May of that year, she was placed out of active service and used as a floating barracks and training ship, a role she held through World War I. In 1921, the ship was ultimately broken up for scrap, after a career spanning 52 years and three German states.
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