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THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

JULY, 1876.

No. CCXCV.

ART. I.-1. Kurze Geschichte der Deutschen Kriegs-Marine nach ihrem Ursprunge, ihrer organischen Entwickelung, und ihren seitherigen Leistungen. Von A. VON CROUSAZ. Berlin und Wriezen am Oder: 1873.

2. The Annual of the Royal School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, No. 4. London: 1874.

THE progress and condition of the naval power of foreign

nations cannot be other than supremely interesting to a maritime people like ourselves. Apart from all selfish feeling, originating in a fear that our own particular domain may be invaded, to watch the advance of a foreign navy is an occupation replete with interest for those who are intent upon maintaining the maritime pre-eminence of this country, and who are desirous of learning-from comparisons of its condition with that of the forces of other powers-how our own service may be improved and strengthened, or even only kept at the proper level of efficiency. Like many others of our public institutions the British navy has had a slowly progressive growth. Great changes have from time to time been made in its organisation and in other and minor details. The naval officer of a past age would scarcely recognise in the navy of the present day the service to which he had belonged, so altered are the structure, the armament, the appearance of the ships, and the customs of those who man them. Still there has been a remarkable continuity in the history of our navy. Customs of which the origin is lost in, as far as naval history is concerned, a pre-historic antiquity are still rife on board the ships of her Majesty. The vocabulary of the seamen of the present time-enriched, indeed, by many additions and softened

VOL. CXLIV. NO. CCXCV.

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in its expletives-is in all essentials the same as that in use some centuries ago. Our own age has been remarkable for the extraordinary improvement-revolution, perhaps, would be a more suitable word-which has been wrought in the science of naval gunnery; yet there are at this moment, in ships of the most modern type in Queen Victoria's service, guns mounted upon carriages which are all but exact facsimiles of those which were worked by the seamen of Elizabeth.

When, therefore, we are able to contemplate-as those who live at the present day are privileged to do—the growth of a naval force in its completeness, and to witness the whole course of its history from its inception to its latest phase, the interest with which we do so may well be scientific, as it may be envious or patriotic. We may learn how much of our own organisation and customs or regulations has been deemed worthy of imitation by the founders of a service turned out of hand, as it were, complete and finished from the first. We may see how far a force so established may differ from our own, the almost insensible growth of centuries, and in what points the divergence is to be found. The German navy, though by no means an unique instance, amidst the many navies of recent establishment, exactly supplies these conditions. Its connexion with our own has been somewhat close. Many of its officers have studied their profession and learned its duties on board British ships. Several of its ships still retain the names which belonged to them when they were included in our own Navy List.' The most powerful of those which now compose it were constructed in this country from designs supplied by our own naval architects. Moreover, it has attained to such a respectable degree of strength as to have quite recently attracted to itself the attention of Europe.

The extraordinary ability exhibited by the administrators of Germany, or more correctly of Prussia, in organising and perfecting their vast military power, might reasonably enough be expected to extend to the institution of their naval force. It is, perhaps, a sufficient fulfilment of such expectation that the German navy has already come to be regarded as a factor of no small importance in the political calculations of the day. Such calculations are admittedly less accurate than the rigorous operations of more exact sciences. So it may be quite worth our while to ascertain the just value of this late addition to the stupendous warlike might of Germany.

Short as has been its existence this navy is not without a historian. Major von Crousaz has written a volume in which he traces its career from its origin. It might be fairly alleged

against the German navy-if this writer be allowed to be its legitimate representative-that, like most parvenus, it lays claim to an artificial, or at least a strained genealogy. But a great and powerful nation like the Germans has little need to rely upon such a possession, even if it were a real one, for claiming a large share of consideration for its fleet. Heavy ironclads, well-disciplined seamen, intelligent officers, and respectable performances in war as well as in peace are advantages the possession of which Germany may justly claim, and for which Prussia deserves her gratitude; for it is from the handful of Prussian ships that the present German fleet has been evolved. The great Napoleon is said to have replied to the flatteries of some pedigree-makers, who desired to discover for him a brilliant ancestry, that his patent of nobility really dated from the battle of Montenotte. So the true history of the German navy may be said to begin with the acquisition by Prussia, or the North German Bund, of the huge ironclad König Wilhelm.'

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The author of the Short History of the German Navy' appears disposed to find its origin in the armaments of the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages against the pirates who infested the German coasts. We may therefore allow him a certain moderation in fixing it in the seventeenth century, in the reign of the Great Elector. The history, of which the beginning is thus fixed, though not perfectly continuous, still maintains a connexion throughout. In one way it reflects accurately the general history of the country. The navy was first that of Brandenburg, then of Prussia, then of the North German Bund, and last of United Germany. These were its various phases: at first electoral; then royal; then confederate; and now imperial. In its latest phase it would seem to be not unworthy of the great country beneath whose flag it sails.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 first gave to Brandenburg, an inland state, a footing on the sea-coast. Sweden then ceded to the Elector the province of Farther Pomerania, lying east of the river Oder. In subsequent contests with his Swedish enemies the Great Elector experienced the advantages and disadvantages of a maritime frontier. Exposed to the descents of the Swedish navy, it, on the other hand, supplied a base of operations for attacks on Swedish commerce, or on the island of Rugen, at that time a possession of Sweden. Three frigates and ten smaller vessels were constructed in Denmark to the Elector's order, and cruised in the Baltic as the first Brandenburg squadron. Of these vessels some had

the brilliant fortune to take part with the combined Dutch and Danish fleet in the great victory gained by the allies over that of Sweden, off Bornholm, in the year 1676. Those who remember the recent origin of the present German navy, and who would scarcely carry back its foundation beyond the excitement of 1848, when the Frankfort Parliament decreed the creation of a fleet, and the Schleswig-Holstein affair pointed to its probable employment, will find it difficult to allow the claim which this navy puts forward to represent a division of the force which fought under the orders of the celebrated Cornelius Tromp.

The name of Tromp carries us back to an epoch remote even in our own long naval history. Cornelius-of the younger of the three generations of his family which had been distinguished in the sea-service of the Netherlands-was one of the celebrated Dutch admirals who fought against us in the wars of the Restoration. In 1675 the States-General took part in the war between Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg. By treaty, their high mightinesses agreed to send a squadron of nine ships to protect the lately acquired territory of the electorate on the Baltic. In the following year a combined fleet of Danish and Dutch ships cruised under the orders of the celebrated Niels Juel and Cornelius Tromp. Under these illustrious seamen the Brandenburg squadron took part in the great events that followed the junction of their forces. Before Tromp had joined him, Niels Juel had fought with the Swedes more than one of those bloody and indecisive actions which are so familiar to the readers of the history of our own wars with the Dutch.

The result of the battles of the combined fleet was very different. Nothing illustrates this interesting period of naval history, at which the German navy is said to have had its birth, more perfectly than the story of the great battle which was fought soon after Tromp had united his forces to those of the Danes. It may not be amiss to tell it here, as we can, in his own words, taken from the despatch sent by him to the States-General *:

'On June 11th, in the forenoon we perceived them [the enemy's ships] again to the southward of Oeland, and we approached them so near, that they were obliged to form line of battle, the wind being WNW., and we had the weather-gage. Then the two fleets engaged; and as soon as the combat had begun, the ship " Tre-kroner," mounting 134 guns and commanded by the Swedish General-Admiral, capsized and blew up, I know not by what accident, as I had hardly given him a

*Vie de Tromp, par M. Richer. Paris, 1784: pp. 150 et seq.

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