The Prinz Adalbert class was a pair of armored cruisers built for the German Kaiserliche Marine under the terms of the First Naval Law, which initiated a major naval expansion program. Two ships of the class were built, Prinz Adalbert and Friedrich Carl, between 1900 and 1904. Their design was heavily based on Germany's previous armored cruiser, Prinz Heinrich, with a series of incremental improvements. These included a revised armor layout to improve internal protection, along with an upgraded main battery armament that consisted of four 21 cm (8.3 in) guns instead of the two 24 cm (9.4 in) carried by Prinz Heinrich. The new ships also received more powerful propulsion systems, making them slightly faster. Prinz Adalbert spent her peacetime career as a gunnery-training ship while Friedrich Carl initially served as the flagship of the Heimatflotte's reconnaissance forces. By 1909, she had been replaced by more modern cruisers and joined Prinz Adalbert as a training vessel.
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