She was built under yard no 150 by AG.Weser at Bremen for the German Navy.
15 May 1905 keel laid down.
02 Aug. 1905 launched under the name "PLANET".
Tonnage 900 BRT, 826 ton maximum displacement. Dim. 59.2 x 9.8 x 3.44m. (draught), length on the waterline 49 meter.
Powered by two triple expansion steam engines 350 ihp-, speed 9-5 knots.
Range 3.820 miles at 7 knots by a consumption of coal of 161 ts.
Armament 3 - 37mm. 2 machine guns.
16 Nov. 1905 entered service as a survey vessel.
During mid December 1905 she made a trial voyage from Kiel via Skagen to Brunsbuttel, and then via the same route back.
21 January 1906 sailed from Germany and via Lisbon to Cape Town where she arrived on 04 April.
14 April sailed from Cape Town and surveyed the seas between Bouvet and St Edward Island until 05 May.
Then she carried out coastal surveys from Durban to Madagascar, many riffs and banks depict on the sea charts of that time, the crew of the PLANET found out did not exist.
Mid June the PLANET crossed the Indian Ocean and surveyed the waters of the Maldivians and Ceylon.
She surveyed the waters off Sumatra and Java and found the deepest place in Strait Sunda (7450m), named after the ship 'Planet Tief'.
Arrived 02 October in the Bismarck Archipelago, where she grounded in the Salvatti Strait, but a few hours later she was refloated on her own power.
After a crew exchange in January 1907 at Matupi, used for the Deutsche Marine Expedition in the waters of the German Colonial Territory until 17 February 1907 when she arrived at Hong Kong.
When she sailed back she transported in March some people from the island of Uluthi of the Caroline Group which was destroyed by a typhoon to Jap.
Thereafter sailed to the waters off Bougainville and found there a dept of 8045 meters.
Early July 1908 to the Palau Islands, and there they found an rich phosphate supply and increasing shipping made it necessary for better sea charts of the waters around the island.
From 1908 until 1910 used by two German ethnographers Augustin Kramer and Jan Nevermann, who conducted the first island-by-island survey of the entire chain. Their findings, published in two major volumes, represent an invaluable documentation of the geography people, and culture of the Marshall Islands at that time.
When World War I broke out she was sank by her own crew in Yap on 7 Oct. 1914
08 October 1916 raised by the Japanese and broken up.
Marshall Islands 1988 25c sg188, scott194
Source MARHST-L Watercraft Philately vol. 35 page 52. Navicula.