Chapter IV: British Influence on the German Navy

In a very special sense the German Navy is the child of the British Navy, which is the mother of all the great naval forces of the world to-day. From the very first it has been no secret that the German Fleet was definitely planned on the model furnished by the many centuries' development of the British Navy, and the Emperor William has been one of the principal agencies through which this formative influence has been exerted in more recent years. He came to the throne at a moment when naval sentiment in Germany was at its lowest point, and he assisted in the initial revival which occurred before Grand Admiral von Tirpitz came on the scene.

Old residents of Portsmouth still remember a boy whom they occasionally saw walking about the dockyard looking at the ships with admiration and rapt attention. His greatest delight seemed to be to watch the great ironclads moving in and out of Spithead. Sometimes he would find his way on board vessels of the Royal Navy. This lad was none other than the present German Emperor. As a grandson of Queen Victoria, he was a frequent visitor in his boyhood and early manhood to his grandmother during the summer months when she was in residence at Osborne, and on one occasion his father and mother, then Crown Prince and Princess of Germany, rented Norris Castle, on the outskirts of Cowes, and lived there for several months with their children. Prince William, who was a great favourite of the late Queen, thus not only became an eager spectator of the naval pageants in the Solent directly under the windows of Osborne House and Norris Castle, but watched with interest the gay assemblage in Cowes roadstead for the regatta from year to year.

At this time the newly-created German Empire had practically no fleet. During the Franco-Prussian War the few ships which flew the flag of the North German Confederation were so weak that they could take no part in the conflict. The memory of these recent events was still fresh in the mind of the future Emperor when he visited England and watched the activities of the British Navy, whose far-flung squadrons performed the triple task of protecting the Motherland from fear of invasion, safeguarding all her oversea possessions, and defending British ocean-borne commerce. He determined that he, too, would have a great fleet when he succeeded to the throne of the German Empire.

This is no imaginary picture of the ideas which were taking root in the mind of the ruler of the German Empire to-day. Years afterwards--in fact, in 1904--addressing King Edward, on the occasion of His Majesty's visit to the Kiel Regatta, the Emperor paid a tribute to the power and traditions of the British Navy, with which, he added, he became acquainted as a youth during visits which he paid to England. He recalled that he had had many a sail in the _Dolphin_ and _Alberta_, old British yachts, and had seen mighty ironclads constructed which had since served their time and disappeared from the Navy List. "When I came to the throne I attempted to reproduce on a scale commensurate with the resources and interests of my own country that which had made such a deep impression on my mind when I saw it as a young man in England."

When he first advocated the construction of a big navy, the German people viewed his dreams with indifference and distrust. Shackled by a system of conscription in order to provide the Empire with its huge army, they asked what it would profit them if to the burden of a great army they added the vast expense of a fleet capable not merely of defending their coasts, but of operating on the offensive in distant seas. At first the Emperor made little progress in educating public opinion; but he still nursed those dreams of sea-power--very moderate dreams at that date, before Admiral von Tirpitz came on the scene--which had first taken shape in his mind when he wandered about Portsmouth Dockyard, and viewed from the grounds of Osborne House the coming and going of mighty British warships. In the early days of the present century he referred with some pride to the persistency with which he had pursued his aims in spite of popular disfavour. At the launch of the _Kaiser Karl der Grosse_ he said: "If the increase in the navy which I had demanded with urgent prayers had not been consistently refused me during the first eight years of my reign--I did not even escape derision and mocking at the time--in how different a manner should we now be able to promote our prosperous commerce and our interests overseas!" He had to wait for many years before he saw his dreams reaching fruition.

As the British Parliament is the mother of all popular representative institutions, so the British Navy is the mother of navies. If the records of most of the great fleets of the world are searched, it will be found that in greater or less degree they owe their birth to the more or less direct assistance of British naval officers, oft times acting with the direct authority of the British Admiralty; while in almost every fleet in the world even to-day may be found ships designed by British brains and constructed of British material by the skilled craftsmen of these islands. It was to England that Peter the Great came to watch the shipbuilding on the Thames, and it was with a large body of British mechanics that he returned to Russia to create a fleet with which to defend his empire and extend its borders at the point of the gun. The prestige of the Russian Navy in the seventeenth century was due entirely to the skill and daring of Scotsmen. The Greigs of four generations, Admiral Elphinstone, Lord Duffus Gordon, and a number of other Scotsmen entered the Navy of the Czar and did splendid service; and some of the descendants of these pioneers of the Russian Navy may still be traced in the fleet of to-day. The American Navy was, of course, of distinctly British origin; so were the fleets of many of the South American Republics; while, as everybody knows, the seeds of sea-power of Japan were sown by British naval officers, including first and foremost Admiral Sir Archibald Douglas, and her ships were mainly built in England. The excellence to which the Chinese Navy once attained was also due to British instruction under another Scotsman, Admiral Lang; and one of the principal shipyards of Italy, as well as her gun factory, is of British origin, and is still linked with its British parent. The Spanish Navy is now being recreated under British supervision; Turkey never was so nearly a sea power as when she had British naval officers in her service; and under Admiral Mark Kerr the glories of the Greek Navy are being revived.

In the case of the modern German Fleet the British Admiralty had little part in its upbuilding, but British naval power fired the imagination of the Emperor, and it was a kindly present made years before by King William IV. to the then King of Prussia which first directed his Majesty's thoughts towards the sea. When the present Emperor was a boy, one of his favourite recreations was to sail a beautiful model of about 20 tons of a British frigate on the Havel lakes near Potsdam. This little ship, of excellent workmanship, was sent as a present to the then ruler of Prussia early in the last century by our sailor King, and was a never-failing source of pleasure to the present German Emperor as a youth. From his earliest years at home and in England the future ruler's aspirations were always towards the sea, and we can now see that his dreams of later years, which have taken such tangible shape, were largely due to those vivid impressions of sea-power which he obtained during his visits to England, and which reached their climax in 1889, when Queen Victoria, on the occasion of his visit to the Cowes Regatta, conferred on him, a foreign monarch, the, then, unique rank of Admiral of the Fleet.

Though other foreign princes and monarchs have since been made honorary officers of the British Navy, the German Emperor remained for some years the only person of foreign birth holding supreme rank. The commission conferred upon the Kaiser was of course purely honorary, but his Majesty never concealed the pride with which he donned the British uniform with its deep gold cuffs and cocked hat, and he could claim that he was the only ruler of a foreign State who ever commanded the British Navy in modern times.

Great Britain has boasted of her "splendid isolation," and the German Emperor's is the only alien hand which has controlled any of her fleets. In times gone by a British squadron was placed under the orders of Peter the Great. This incident occurred during the Czar's operations against Sweden, when he received the assistance of a squadron from these islands and hoisted his flag in command of the allied forces. Between that date and the year when the German Emperor became an Admiral of the Fleet the British Navy maintained its absolute independence, and British officers were not even permitted to accept foreign decorations. But soon after receiving the honorary rank from Queen Victoria, the Emperor seized the opportunity to emulate the example of Peter the Great, and he afterwards confessed in a speech he delivered on board the British battleship, _Royal Sovereign_, that the incident had left an indelible impression upon his mind. "One of the best days of my life," he remarked, "which I shall never forget as long as I live, was the day when I inspected the Mediterranean Fleet when I was on board the _Dreadnought_,[7] and my flag was hoisted for the first time."

The Emperor at this time was making a cruise in the Mediterranean, and visited the Piræus to attend the wedding of his sister to the present King of Greece. Sir Anthony Hoskins, who was then only a Vice-Admiral, was in command of the British Fleet which had assembled in honour of the royal marriage. The German Emperor decided that in his new rôle as a British officer he would exercise command, and consequently the emblem of an Admiral of the Fleet, which consists of the Union flag, was broken at the main on board the old battleship _Dreadnought_, and Sir Anthony Hoskins, being a junior officer, was forthwith relieved of the control of the British men-of-war, and nominally, though not of course actually, the German Emperor, during the time that his flag was flown, was in command of the greatest of all the fighting squadrons of the British Empire.

On a subsequent occasion, at Malta, his Majesty again visited the British Fleet. Arriving at this great naval base he announced that on the following day he would inspect one of the men-of-war. Accordingly, he proceeded on board, and his flag was forthwith hoisted. It was thought that his Majesty would formally walk round the decks and then take some light refreshments and return to his yacht. This was not the case, however. No sooner did the Emperor reach the quarter-deck, where he was received with naval honours by all the officers, than he took off his coat and intimated that he was ready to go over the ship. His Majesty went everywhere, from the turrets to the engine and boiler-rooms, and kept the Captain fully occupied in answering a multitude of questions as to the design and equipment of the vessel. With all the impetuosity of his nature he dived into every hole and corner and saw everything, and the Captain was kept so busy that he forgot his duty as host and the wines he had laid in for the occasion. At last the inspection ended, the questions ceased, and his Majesty prepared, after complimenting the Captain on the smartness of his ship, to go down the companion ladder to his lunch. As he did so, he turned to this commanding officer and said: "Yours must be the longest ship in the British Navy." "I think not, your Majesty," replied the Captain, "it's only 420 feet long." "Oh, you surely are mistaken," added the Emperor, and then the Captain remembered the naval slang as to "long-ships in the navy"--namely, those with long intervals between refreshments. He forthwith apologised profusely for the oversight, and implored the Emperor to return to the cabin. His Majesty would not, however, do so, but added: "January 27th is my birthday, and my orders are that on that day you entertain all your brother captains to dinner and drink my health." He then left, pleased at the result of the incident.

When the day arrived, the dinner was duly held, and the guests enjoyed themselves immensely. During the evening they despatched the following message to the Emperor: "The orders of our Admiral of the Fleet have been carried out, and we have drunk your Majesty's good health. But there is one point on which we cannot agree with your Majesty, and that is as to the length of H.M.S. ----." From this the Emperor, who is familiar with the language of the navy, was able consequently to infer that on that evening there had been no lack of hospitality.

After the lapse of many years during which the progress of the German Navy became ever more and more the preoccupation of the British people, it is difficult to realize that when the movement for naval expansion on the other side of the North Sea first began to take shape it was regarded with sympathy by the British nation, and the German Emperor, wearing his uniform as an honorary British officer, was, of all monarchs, the most popular in this country. The two countries were on terms of growing cordiality when the Emperor succeeded his father in 1888. The absence of any reference by the new Emperor in his proclamation either to England or to France caused momentary anxiety, but that feeling quickly passed away, and in the following summer the new Emperor was the central figure in the great naval pageant at Spithead.

For the first time in the history of the British Fleet naval manoeuvres had been held in 1885, and in the year after William II.'s accession the young ruler witnessed the greatest display of British sea-power which had ever been organised. The assembly of 1889 far exceeded in numbers and in the suggestion of power the Naval Review which had marked the celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. It was the most powerful fleet ever brought together in time of peace. The Naval Defence Act, the culmination of a long and vigorous agitation, had been passed in the spring, and it was thought appropriate to mobilize the fleet as a demonstration in the eyes of the world. The German Emperor determined to visit this country for the special purpose of joining in this festival of British sea-power. In those days the act of mobilization occupied considerable time; though the ships in reserve were manned in the middle of July it was not until August 1st that the fleet assembled at Spithead. It included 20 battleships, 6 coast defence vessels, 29 cruisers, 3 gun vessels, 14 gunboats, and 38 torpedo boats. The great anchorage presented a brave appearance when, on the following day, the Emperor arrived, escorted by a squadron of his small navy. This force consisted of the battleships _Friedrich der Grosse_, _Preussen_, _Deutschland_, _Kaiser_, _Sachsen_, _Baden_, and _Oldenburg_, together with the despatch-vessels _Zieten_ and _Wacht_; while the training ship for German naval cadets, the _Niobe_, was also present together with the corvette _Irene_, commanded by the Emperor's brother. The German Emperor and his ships received an enthusiastic welcome as he passed through the British Fleet on board his yacht, the _Hohenzollern_. The spectacle was one of the most brilliant and imposing ever witnessed in waters which had often been the scene of naval displays. On the following Monday, when the Prince of Wales, representing Queen Victoria, inspected the ships, his Royal Highness was accompanied by his Majesty, to whom, subsequently, all the principal officers were presented on board the _Victoria and Albert_. Early on the following day the fleet proceeded to sea, steaming past the German Emperor, who watched the evolution from the deck of the _Osborne_, moored in Sandown Bay.

Thus did the new ruler of Germany, on whom Queen Victoria had just conferred the honorary rank of Admiral of the Fleet in the British service, gain a unique knowledge of the size and efficiency of the British Navy normally maintained on a peace footing in home waters. The contrast in organization and in administration between the British Navy and the German Army can hardly have failed to impress the young Emperor, who had devoted himself with unremitting persistency to the study of the military machine of his own country. Looking back with the knowledge which we now possess of the rapidity with which a navy can be raised from a peace footing to a war footing as exemplified by the modern German Navy, we can imagine the impression which the British mobilization made upon his Majesty. And then, when the time came for the ships to pass out of the anchorage into the channel, the delays and confusion which occurred must have suggested to the young ruler, familiar with the standard of efficiency attained by the German Army, that something was lacking.

A contemporary account of this evolution records that: "It was at half-past three in the morning that the fleet began to unmoor preparatory to proceeding to sea, but it was not until nearly eleven that Sir George Tryon--the Admiral in supreme command--was able to give the signal for his squadron to weigh anchor. Nearly all the delay was caused by trouble and mishaps connected with the anchoring gear of various ships. There is no part of the equipment of a man-of-war which requires more management and experience in handling than the ground tackle. Every vessel has peculiarities of her own in this respect, therefore it is due, probably, to the crews being in most cases quite strange to their ships, and to the officers not yet having got the hang of things, that so many shortcomings were made apparent. Soon after ten o'clock Admiral Baird, in command of the other section of the fleet, got impatient of further delay, for it was manifest that if he did not start speedily another review might have to be postponed. So he signalled the ships of his squadron to proceed to sea as soon as ready, and shortly afterwards they began filing out eastward in a long single line. But some ships could not obey the order; and amongst these were the _Anson_, _Collingwood_, and _Inflexible_, still engaged in getting up their anchors."

This same writer concluded his account of the spectacle with the remark that "A grander, a more magnificent demonstration of England's Fleet it would indeed be difficult to imagine." But behind the seeming of things there stood revealed an organization which, though it had recently been greatly improved, still left much to be desired in rapid and efficient action. Moreover, at this time even in the Channel Fleet, which then consisted of five ships, and was the only fully commissioned force in home waters, the main purpose of sea-power, to shoot straight, was certainly not kept in view. In his interesting book of reminiscences, "The Navy as I have Known It," Admiral the Hon. Sir Edmund Fremantle, describing the conditions which existed in the Jubilee year, records: "We had large crews and, as all the ships were masted, there was a fair amount of sail drill, while I fear gunnery was little attended to."

There is no record of the impressions which the German Emperor carried home with him from Spithead, but it is more than probable that, while his Majesty was impressed by the great display of ships and men, he was not less impressed by the failure to utilize these resources to the best possible advantage.

The British Navy was living on its past achievements. Though it possessed a mass of material and a large personnel, neither was well organized for war. The available resources exceeded anything belonging to any other nation, but the fleet still basked, content, in the glow of the triumphs achieved in the early years of the nineteenth century. The Navy was unreformed. Steam had taken the place of sails, wood had been superseded, first by iron and then by steel, but the routine of the squadrons, the training of officers and men had undergone little change. The conditions of naval warfare had altered, but the British Fleet remained faithful to the old regime, holding fast to the belief that when war occurred there would be a sufficient interval to allow it to complete its arrangements, elaborate its plans, and place all its resources on a war footing. As the British Navy in its influence on world policy inspired German ambitions, so German thoroughness in organization, when applied to the growing German Fleet, reacted upon the British Navy and gave it a new and vigorous life.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: This ship was, of course, the predecessor of the present _Dreadnought_.]