[Papercaptain]

...at your service (oops - sent off too late!):

The ship was named after an island off the mouth of the river Elbe, belonging then to the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg. It was ordered by the Hamburg Senate on behalf of the Hamburg Admirality (yes, there was an institution of this proud name, even posessing some man-o'-war in the 17th-18th century) as a survey ship in 1907, but it had another purpose as well: to serve the officials and their guests as a vessel to travel in style to the outlying isles and lighthouses on sandbanks of the North Sea. So it's look seems to own the Emperor William's steamer "Hohenzollern II" quite a lot.
Be as it may, the ship was constructed by the Hamburg shipyard Janssen & Schmilinsky and served from 1908 to 1914 as a survey ship for the Hamburg River Authority (Strombauamt) in the ever changing waters around Hamburg.
In WW I the "Schaarhörn" served as an auxiliary minesweeper and coast guard vessel, was laid off from 1919 to 1925, afterwards handed over to the Cuxhaven River Authority. There she served as survey ship and commuter for the civil servants until 1939.
In WW II the "Schaarhörn" was used as a survey ship for the tricky waters off the German North Sea coast as well as for the river Elbe.
After the war the steamer was constantly modernised with equipment for surveying, but as the steam engine etc. were considered no more worthwile keeping, the ship was laid off in 1971, and two years later a Scotsman bought her and planned converting her as a pleasure boat for charter. But this plan failed and so Schaarhörn decayed in a small harbour of the UK, being stripped by souvenir hunters.
In 1987 the German Captain Joachim Kaiser rediscovered the nearly wrecked Schaarhörn and organized a transport back to Hamburg via the "Condock III" in May 1990. Having collected some money for it, the steamer was then repaired to it's old glory by an association "Jugend in Arbeit" (Youth at work, qualifying unemployed people) on the premises of the Hamburg-Harburg Jöhnk shipyard. In May 1995 the restoration was completed, and the "Schaarhörn" is now a museum ship and steams on for excursions around the Hamburg harbour and down the river Elbe into the Northsea.

Kind regards, -
Papercaptain