And so the great day dawned. The law was passed, after much fighting and talking, by a great majority. The strength of the German navy was assured; naval construction was to be accomplished.
By means of construction and keeping an increased number of ships in service a fleet soon sprang into being. In order to maneuver, lead, and train its personnel a new book of regulations and signal code were needed—at the beginning of my reign these had been worked out merely for one division—four ships—since at that time a larger number of units never navigated together in the German navy—i. e., a larger number were not kept in service. And even these were out of service in the autumn, so that, in winter, there was (with the exception of cruisers in foreign waters) absolutely no German navy. All the care expended during the summer season on training of crews, officers, noncommissioned officers, engine-room crews, and stokers, as well as on rigging and upkeep of ships, was as good as wasted when the ships were retired from service in the autumn; and when spring came and they were put back into commission things had to be started at the beginning again. The result was that any degree of continuity in training and of coherence among the crews with relation to each other and their ships—of "ship spirit," in short—could not be maintained. This was maintained only on board the ships stationed in foreign waters. Therefore, after the necessary heating equipment, etc., had been put in, I ordered that ships be kept in service also through the winter, which was a veritable boon to the development of the fleet.
In order to obtain the necessary number of units needed by the new regulations, Admiral von Tirpitz, in view of the shortage of ships of the line, had already formed into divisions all the sorts of vessels available, including gunboats and dispatch boats, and carried out evolutions with them, so that when the replacement of line ships began to take place the foundations for the new regulations had already been laid. The latter were then constantly developed with the greatest energy by all the officials concerned and kept pace with the growth of the fleet.
Hard work was done on the development of that important weapon, the torpedo boat. At that time we were filled with joyful pride that a German torpedo-boat division was the first united torpedo squadron ever to cross the North Sea. It sailed, under the command of my brother, Prince Henry, to take part in the celebration of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee (1887).
COLONEL GOETHAL'S VISIT
The development of Heligoland and its fortifications as a point of support for small cruisers and torpedo boats—also, later on, for U-boats—was also taken in hand, after the necessary protective work for preserving the island had been constructed by the state—in connection with which work the Empire and Prussia fought like cat and dog.
On account of the growth of the fleet it became necessary to widen the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. After a hard struggle we caused the new locks to be built of the largest possible size, capable of meeting the development of dreadnaughts for a long time to come. There the far-sighted policy of the Admiral was brilliantly vindicated.
This found unexpected corroboration by a foreigner. Colonel Goethals, the builder of the Panama Canal, requested through the United States Government permission to inspect the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal and its new locks. Permission was most willingly granted. After a meal with me, at which Admiral von Tirpitz was present, the Admiral questioned the American engineer (who was enthusiastic over our construction work) concerning the measurements of the Panama locks, whereupon it transpired that the measurements of the locks of the Panama Canal were much smaller than those of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. To my astonished question as to how that could be possible, Goethals replied that the Navy Department, upon inquiry by him, had given those measurements for ships of the line. Admiral von Tirpitz then remarked that this size would be far from adequate for the future, and that the newer type of dreadnaughts and superdreadnaughts would not be able to go through the locks, consequently the canal would soon be useless for American and other big battleships. The Colonel agreed, and remarked that this was already true of the newest ships under construction, and he congratulated His Excellency upon having had the courage to demand and put through the big locks of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, which he had looked upon with admiration and envy.
In like manner the very backward and antiquated Imperial docks [the old tinker's shops, as Tirpitz called them] were rebuilt and developed into model modern plants and the arrangements for the workers were developed so as to further the welfare of the latter along the most approved lines. Only those who, like myself, have followed and seen with their own eyes from the very beginning the origin and development of all these factors necessary to the building up—nay, the creation anew—of the fleet can form anything like a proper idea of the enormous achievement of Admiral von Tirpitz and his entire corps of assistants.
The office of the Imperial Naval Department was also a new creation; the old "Oberkommando" was eliminated when it was divided into the two main branches of Admiralty Staff and Imperial Naval Department. Both of these (as in the army) were directly under the supreme war commander in chief—this meant that there was no longer any official between the Emperor and his navy.