SMS ("His Majesty's Ship Emperor William II") was the second ship of the of pre-dreadnought battleships. She was built at the Imperial Dockyard in Wilhelmshaven and launched on 14 September 1897. The ship was commissioned into the fleet as its flagship on 13 February 1900. was armed with a main battery of four guns in two twin turrets. She was powered by triple expansion engines that delivered a top speed of .
served as the flagship of the Active Battle Fleet until 1906, participating in numerous fleet training exercises and visits to foreign ports. She was replaced as flagship by the new battleship . After the new dreadnought battleships began entering service in 1908, was decommissioned and put into reserve. She was reactivated in 1910 for training ship duties in the Baltic, but was again taken out of service in 1912.
With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, and her sisters were brought back into active duty as coastal defense ships in V Battle Squadron. Her age, coupled with shortages of ship crews, led to her withdrawal from this role in February 1915, after which she served as a command ship for the High Seas Fleet, based in Wilhelmshaven. Following the end of the war in November 1918, was stricken from the navy list and sold for scrap in the early 1920s. Her bow ornament is preserved at the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr in Dresden.
Design
After the German (Imperial Navy) ordered the four s in 1889, a combination of budgetary constraints, opposition in the (Imperial Diet), and a lack of a coherent fleet plan delayed the acquisition of further battleships. The former Secretary of the (Imperial Navy Office), Leo von Caprivi became the Chancellor of Germany in 1890, and (Vice Admiral) Friedrich von Hollmann became the new Secretary of the . Hollmann requested a new battleship in 1892 to replace the elderly ironclad turret-ship , built twenty years earlier, but the Franco-Russian Alliance, signed the year before, put the government's attention on expanding the Army's budget. Parliamentary opposition forced Hollmann to delay until the following year, when Caprivi spoke in favor of the project, noting that Russia's recent naval expansion threatened Germany's Baltic Sea coastline. In late 1893, Hollmann presented the Navy's estimates for the 1894–1895 budget year, again with a request for a replacement for , which was approved. The new ship abandoned the six-gun arrangement of the s for four large-caliber pieces, the standard arrangement of other navies at the time. A second member of the class, , was delayed until early 1896, when the approved the ship for the 1896–1897 budget.
was long overall and had a beam of . Her draft was forward and aft. She displaced as designed and up to at full load. The ship was powered by three 3-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines that drove three screw propellers. Steam was provided by four marine-type and eight cylindrical water-tube boilers, all of which burned coal and were vented through a pair of tall funnels. s powerplant was rated at , which generated a top speed of . She had a cruising radius of at a speed of . She had a normal crew of 39 officers and 612 enlisted men; while serving as the fleet flagship, she carried an additional admiral's staff of 12 officers and 51–63 enlisted men.
The ship's armament consisted of a main battery of four 24 cm (9.4 in) SK L/40 guns in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the central superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of eighteen 15 cm (5.9 inch) SK L/40 guns carried in a mix of turrets and casemates. Close-range defense against torpedo boats was provided by a battery of twelve 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/30 quick-firing guns all mounted in casemates. She also carried twelve machine cannon, but these were later removed. The armament suite was rounded out with six torpedo tubes, one of which was placed in an above-water swivel mount at the stern, with four submerged on the broadside and one submerged in the bow. The ship's belt armor was thick, and the main armor deck was thick. The conning tower and main battery turrets were protected with of armor plating, and the secondary casemates received of armor protection.