SMS Panther was one of six gunboats of the Iltis-class of the Kaiserliche Marine and, like her sisters, served in Germany's overseas colonies. The ship was launched on 1 April1901 in the Kaiserliche Werft, Danzig. She had a crew of 9 officers and 121 men.
The Panther became notorious in 1911 when she was deployed to the Morrocan port of Agadir during the "Agadir Crisis" (also called the "Second Moroccan Crisis"). Germany did this because they wanted to reinforce their demand of the French for regions of French Equatorial Africa. This led to the term "gunboat diplomacy" which was used especially by the British. It involves, originally the deployment of a gunboat but now refers to any armed service, to a region to reinforce a request or demand made diplomatically. It can be said that this boat helped to increase the tension leading up to the First World War and did help to cause it in the end. The Panther was supposedly sent to protect German citizens in the port but actually piled pressure onto the French concerning their attempted colonization of Morocco.
Years earlier, in 1905, the Panther was also deployed to the Brazilian Port of Itajahy, where her crew conducted an unauthorized search and the kidnapping of a German dissident on Brazilian soil. That incident became known as the "Panther Affair" ("Caso Panther"). [1][2][3][4][5]
^ Joffily, Jose (October 1988). O Caso Panther (in Portuguese). Editora Paz e Terra.
^ Seyferth, Giralda (November 1994). O Incidente do Panther (Itajai, SC, 1905)4 (in Portuguese). Rio de Janeiro: Comunicacoes do PPGAS.
^ Guedes, Max Justo (2002). O Barao do Rio Branco e a Modernizacao da Defesa (PDF), Rio Branco - a America do Sul e a Modernizacao do Brasil (in Portuguese), Fundacao Alexandre de Gusmao, 314-315. Retrieved during 2006.
^ Fauchille, Paul [1894] (1906). Revue Generale de Droit International Public (PDF), Droit de Gens - Histoire Diplomatique - Droit Penal - Droit Fiscal - Droit Administratif 13 (in French), Paris: A. PEDONE, Libraire-Editeur, 200-206. Retrieved during 2006.