The peace with Denmark in 1850 ushered in a period of assiduous and systematic labour at the task of building up a Prussian fleet. Throughout this important period, the moving spirit was the man who has already been described as the father of the German Navy, Prince Adalbert of Prussia. This enthusiastic and indefatigable sailor was a first cousin of King Frederick William IV., who refused the imperial crown as a democratic gift, and of the Emperor William I., who finally won it on the battlefields of France. In his boyhood, Prince Adalbert had had the doctrine of the vital importance of sea-power implanted in his mind by a veteran soldier, Field-Marshal Gneisenau, and he never forgot the lesson. At the age of twenty-one he paid a visit of two months' duration to England, where he was cordially welcomed into naval circles, and where his passion for the sea was inflamed by the conversation of men who had fought under Nelson at Trafalgar. He lost no opportunity of inspecting war vessels, shipyards, and docks, and returned to Germany with note-books crammed with information as to all he had seen and heard. A British admiral is said to have declared that the Prince knew more about the warships of Great Britain than many of their own officers, and one of the last acts of this sailor Hohenzollern was to pay a visit to the English dockyards to familiarize himself with the latest novelties in naval construction.
Four years after his first journey to England, one of those naval enquiries already alluded to was held at Berlin, and a commission was appointed to advise as to the types of vessels to be chosen for the fleet which the Prussian Government contemplated building at some indefinite future date. Prince Adalbert was a member of this body, but when asked for his views on the subject he satisfied himself with laying before his colleagues the opinion of his friend, Captain Mingaye, a British naval officer, who advised that the triumph of steam over sails and oars presented Prussia with a splendid opportunity to create sea-power which should be "mighty" from the outset. Curiously enough, the War Minister, von Rauch, inferred from this suggestion that naval construction was passing through a transition stage of doubtful issue, and it was used by him as a pretext for postponing the consideration of the whole question; for, he argued, Prussia could not afford to squander money on uncertain experiments. In the succeeding years, the Prince cruised the Mediterranean in an Austrian ship with his friend the Archduke Johann, afterwards the Imperial Administrator, and made in Sardinian and British war vessels several longer voyages, during which he devoted himself with a whole heart to the study of seamanship and navigation. He also added materially to his knowledge while on board one of the ships of the British Mediterranean Squadron, which at the time was engaged in man[oe]uvres. On his return home from these experiences, he secured the appointment of Schröder to the Navigation School ship Amazon, always with the idea that the vessel would be the training-ground of the officers' corps of a future Prussian Navy. As we have seen, the Prince was chosen as chairman of the Frankfort advisory committee on naval questions. Some months previously he had addressed to the National Assembly a "Memorandum as to the Formation of a German Fleet." This document, which was printed and published, not only is a remarkable testimony to the author's insight into the true nature of naval problems, but also contains a clear enunciation of the principles which have since guided Germany's naval policy. Pointing to the humiliation of the Danish blockade he wrote:
"And this Germany—united Germany—must calmly submit to, precisely at the great moment when, after long years, it once more feels itself a whole, a Power of forty millions of people. But the Fatherland recognises the oppressive nature of its situation; it demands a remedy all the more speedy because after these events, it foresees with certainty how much more painful its position might some day be if it were pitted against one of the great Sea Powers, a Power against which the German ships would not be secure even in their own harbours, a fleet which could menace our coasts with debarkations on a much more extensive scale than is possible to our present foe. United Germany, however, wishes to see her territories energetically protected, her flag respected, her trade once more flourishing, and in the future to have some influence on the sea."
Prince Adalbert then weighed the three alternatives: (a) Defensive coast protection; (b) offensive coast protection; and (c) an independent German sea-power; and finally reached the conclusion:
"Germany must either build no battleships or at once build so many that she can act towards her neighbours as an independent Sea-Power. Anything intermediate would be a useless expense, an empty pretension, and would arouse in the nation expectations which, in the moment of danger, our sea-power would not be able to fulfil.
"If we now ask what would be the smallest number of battleships which would allow us to act in European waters as an independent fleet, especially against the ever-ready Russian Baltic fleet, I think we must take twenty battleships as the minimum that would be able to measure itself with it. But such a fleet would make Germany fourth among the Sea-Powers of first rank, and place her incontestably in a position to play a great rôle on the sea, a rôle which would be worthy of her position in Europe. For with her twenty battleships she would be able to throw an enormous weight into the scales, turn the balance by her adherence to an alliance, and consequently be as much sought after as an ally on account of her sea-power as on account of her land-power."
The Prince accordingly proposed that the German building programme should include 20 battleships with auxiliary screws, 10 frigates, 30 steam cruisers, 40 gunboats, and 80 gun-sloops; and that the construction of these vessels should be spread over a period of ten years. In this project we have that same principle of the gradual working up to a fixed standard of strength which has characterised all modern German naval legislation.
However, the Prince did not manage to persuade the Frankfort technical commission to adopt his scheme in its entirety, though the programme approved went a long way towards meeting his views. Why this programme was never carried out has already been seen. In the Memorandum just quoted from, Prince Adalbert had written: "The entire nation unanimously demands a German war fleet, for German, absolutely German, it must be, a true representative of the new-born unity of the Fatherland"; and it must have been with a heavy heart that he saw his vision melt away, and went back to Berlin to employ his gifts in a more restricted and less promising field.
The difficulties which opposed themselves to the realisation of the Prince's ideas will be appreciated, when it is stated that the man who built the first warship of any size which had been launched from a German yard since the days of the Hanseatic League is still alive. Wilhelm Schwarm, now ninety-four years of age, was employed as a young man in Klawitter's shipyard at Dantzig, and at the time when the air was filled with talk of a future German Navy, the firm very shrewdly sent him over to the works of Robinson and Russell, on the Thames, to learn the art of constructing vessels of larger size than were then built on the Baltic. He brought back with him the plans for a paddle corvette, which was built under his supervision on the Klawitter slips, fitted with English engines, and, under the name of Dantzig, was an important addition to the Prussian fleet.
At the time of the Crimean War this vessel showed the Prussian flag at Constantinople for the first time in history, and it was also with her that Prince Adalbert experienced a rather grotesque adventure in the Mediterranean in 1856. In the previous year a German ship had been plundered by the Riff pirates, and the Prince, happening to be in those parts with the Dantzig, made a reconnaissance, in one of the ship's boats, of the coast of Cape Tree Forcas, where the outrage had occurred. The natives, as was their custom, fired on the party from the shore. Annoyed by this molestation, Prince Adalbert determined to teach the Arabs a severe lesson. Having manned and armed all his boats, he stormed the steep and rocky shore and planted the Prussian flag on the summit of the cliffs. His triumph was, however, a very brief one, for the enemy immediately returned to the attack, and drove the landing party back to the boats with the loss of seven killed and twenty-three wounded. Official panegyrists extol this rash escapade as an "heroic deed," and declare that it did much to raise the confidence of the young Prussian Navy. As the Riff pirates were no doubt also exultant over their victory, the affair must have been one of those rare encounters with the issue of which both sides were equally satisfied. The Dantzig was sold a few years later in England, in the belief that her timbers were unsound, and was then passed on to Japan, where she was run ashore and burnt by her own crew during an engagement in the civil war.
The problem of obtaining properly qualified personnel for the corps of naval officers was not less difficult to solve than that of building efficient warships. England would have been the natural source on which to draw for instructors, but for political reasons it was decided not to seek assistance from that most competent of all quarters, and the services of three officers of the Swedish Navy were secured. For similar reasons a Swedish naval constructor was engaged. A few years later, however, permission was asked and obtained for a number of cadets to learn their profession on British men-of-war.