abstract
| - SMS Medusa was the seventh member of the ten-ship Gazelle class, built by the Imperial German Navy. She was built by the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen, laid down in early 1900, launched in December 1900, and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet in July 1901. Armed with a main battery of ten guns and two torpedo tubes, Medusa was capable of a top speed of . Medusa served in all three German navies over the span of over forty years. She served as a fleet scout in the period before World War I, and during the first two years of the conflict, she was used as a coastal defense ship. She was one of six cruisers Germany was allowed to keep by the Treaty of Versailles, and she served in the early 1920s in the Reichsmarine. She was withdrawn from service in 1924 and used in secondary duties, but in 1940, the Kriegsmarine converted Medusa into a floating anti-aircraft battery. She defended the port of Wilhelmshaven until the closing days of the war, when she was scuttled by her crew. The wreck was ultimately broken up for scrap in 1948–1950.
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