 She nevertheless proved to be too weakly armed for fleet service, and the next cruising-type vessel to be built in Germany was the "Gazelle" class of light cruisers; they were the first vessels of that type to be built, and they incorporated the best aspects of "Hela" and the unprotected cruisers that had been built in the 1880s and 1890s.The ship served with the fleet from 1898 to 1902, and during this period, from mid-1900 to mid-1901, she was deployed as part of an expeditionary force sent to help suppress the Boxer Rebellion in Qing China.The naval command decided her armament was insufficient for front-line use, so she was extensively modernized between 1903 and 1910, thereafter serving as a tender until the outbreak of World War I.