The first Battle of Heligoland took place on 4 June 1849 during the First Schleswig War and pitted the fledgling Reichsflotte (Imperial Fleet) against the Royal Danish Navy, which had blocked German naval trade in North Sea and Baltic Sea since early 1848. The outcome was inconclusive, with no casualties, and the blockade went on. It remained the only battle of the German fleet.[1][2]
The German bight with Helgoland and the traditional trading routesThe German Corvette SMS HamburgThe Danish Corvettes Gejser and Valkyrien being pursued by ships of the Schleswig-Holstein NavyThe German Corvette SMS LübeckThe Danish Corvette Valkyrien fighting with Schleswig-Holstein ships in 1849
At the outbreak of the First Schleswig War, the Danes instituted a blockade, stopping all German trade in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. This prompted the German parliament at Frankfurt to form a new all-German navy. The Germans had to build a fleet from scratch, buying ships abroad and converting them, and hiring foreign officers (British, Belgian) to lead native veteran merchant mariners.[3]
After about a year of preparation, on 4 June, German Admiral Karl Rudolf Brommy left Bremerhaven with the steam frigate SMS Barbarossa and the smaller steam corvettes Lübeck (1844) and Hamburg (1841) in order to disperse the Danish ships which were guarding the mouth of Weser River. The Danish forces present that day were inferior and retreated, but Brommy managed to cut off[3] the sailing corvette Valkyrien which under captain Andreas Polder sought refuge near the island of Heligoland which at the time belonged to the United Kingdom. The British, while being neutral, had made clear beforehand that a German Navy was not welcome and might be treated as pirates.
Ships of both sides fired some shots, with no effect. When the German approached the island's three-mile zone, the British forces fired warning shots towards them, while allowing the Danish corvette to stay close. Brommy, not willing to draw the Royal Navy into the war, stayed at a distance while the Danish captain Polder was waiting for the arrival of reinforcements from the Danish main fleet. When the modern steamer Gejser, under Kaptajnløjtnant (captain lieutenant) Jørgen Peter Frederik Wulff, came into sight, Brommy retreated, fearing further Danish reinforcements. The Danes followed the Germans to the mouth of the Elbe near Cuxhaven before resuming the blockade.
It was the first and the last excursion of the small fleet under the black-red-gold Flag of Germany.
↑ Im Juni 1849 kam es bei Helgoland zum einzigen Gefecht der, trotz des großen materiellen Aufwandes, niemals voll einsatzfähigen Bundesflotte gegen dänische Schiffe.- Deutsche Marine, History
↑ die erste und einzige Seefahrt unter der Schwarz-rot-goldnen Flagge – Georg Wislicenus, Deutschlands Seemacht
The Battle of Heligoland was fought on 9 May 1864, during the Second Schleswig War, between a Danish squadron led by Commodore Edouard Suenson and a joint Austro-Prussian squadron commanded by the Austrian Commodore Wilhelm von Tegetthoff. The action came about as a result of the Danish blockade of German ports in the North Sea; the Austrians had sent two steam frigates, SMS Schwarzenberg and Radetzky, to reinforce the small Prussian Navy to help break the blockade. After arriving in the North Sea, Tegetthoff joined a Prussian aviso and a pair of gunboats. To oppose him, Suenson had available the steam frigates Niels Juel and Jylland and the corvette Hejmdal.
The naval Battle of Jasmund took place between elements of the Danish and Prussian navies on 17 March 1864 during the Second Schleswig War. The action took place east of the Jasmund peninsula on the Prussian island of Rügen, during a Prussian attempt to weaken the Danish blockade in the Baltic Sea. The Prussian squadron, commanded by Eduard von Jachmann, sortied with a screw frigate, a screw corvette, a paddle steamer, and six gunboats to attack the Danish squadron blockading the eastern Prussian coast. The Danish force was commanded by Edvard van Dockum, and it consisted of one screw frigate, one ship of the line, and two steam corvettes. In an action lasting two hours, the superior Danish squadron forced the Prussians to withdraw, with both sides suffering damage and light casualties. The Danish victory was compounded by the arrival of further warships after the battle, which cemented the blockade. The outcome of the battle, and the naval war in the Baltic as a whole, was irrelevant to the outcome of the war, however, as the Prussian and Austrian armies decisively defeated the Danes on land, forcing them to surrender.
Rear Admiral Karl Rudolf Brommy was a German naval officer who helped establish the first unified German fleet, the Reichsflotte, during the First Schleswig War which broke out just before the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states.
The Prussian Navy, officially the Royal Prussian Navy, was the naval force of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1701 to 1867.
The Seekriegsleitung or SKL was a higher command staff section of the Kaiserliche Marine and the Kriegsmarine of Germany during the World Wars.
Eduard Karl Emanuel von Jachmann was the first Vizeadmiral of the Prussian Navy. He entered the navy in the 1840s after initially serving in the merchant marine. In 1848, Jachmann received his first command, the corvette SMS Amazone; through the 1850s and early 1860s, he held several other commands, including the frigates Thetis—aboard which he took part in the Eulenburg expedition to East Asia—and Arcona. During the Second Schleswig War in 1864, he commanded Prussian naval forces in the Baltic from Arcona, and led a small squadron at the Battle of Jasmund on 17 March. Though defeated in that battle, he was promoted to Konteradmiral for his aggressive handling of the Prussian fleet.
The Reichsflotte was the first navy for all of Germany, established by the revolutionary German Empire to provide a naval force in the First Schleswig War against Denmark. The decision was made on 14 June 1848 by the Frankfurt Parliament, which is considered by the modern German Navy as its birthday.
Victor Valois (1841–1924), also called Anton Friedrich Victor Valois, was a vice-admiral (Vizeadmiral) in the German Imperial Navy. He graduated from the post-graduate Naval War College, the Imperial Naval Academy (Marineakademie) in 1874 in a class with three other future admirals: Otto von Diederichs, Felix von Bendemann, Gustav von Senden-Bibran.
Reinhold von Werner was a Prussian and later Imperial German naval officer in the 19th century, eventually reaching the rank of vice admiral. He commanded warships during the three wars of German Unification, the Second Schleswig War, the Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1864, 1866, and 1870–1871, respectively, and during a naval intervention during a revolution in Spain in 1873. His actions off Spain, considered extreme by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, resulted in his court-martial. He was promoted two years after the intervention in Spain, but was forced into retirement after a major feud with Albrecht von Stosch three years later. Werner wrote numerous books during and after his naval career, and also founded a periodical on maritime topics. He was ennobled in 1901 and died in February 1909.
SMS Pfeil was an aviso of the Imperial German Navy, the second and final member of the Blitz class. Her primary offensive armament consisted of a bow-mounted torpedo tube, and she was armed with a battery of light guns to defend herself against torpedo boats, a sign of the growing importance of torpedoes as effective weapons in the period. The Blitz class featured a number of innovations in German warship design: they were the first steel hulled warships and the first cruiser-type ships to discard traditional sailing rigs.
During the Dano-Hanseatic War (1426–1435) the Danish capital Copenhagen was bombarded twice by ships from six Northern German Hanseatic towns. A first attack in April 1428 was repelled, but a second attack on 15 June was successful. The Danish fleet which anchored in Copenhagen was mostly destroyed, with only three ships surviving. For the first time in the Northern European history of naval warfare ship artillery was used over longer distances.
The Imperial law regarding the introduction of a war and civil ensign was an imperial law of the revolutionary German Empire of 1848. It describes the colours black-red-gold and the usage of a general German imperial flag and a war ensign for the Imperial Fleet.
Ernst August was a wooden paddle steamer and corvette in the navy of the German Confederation, named after Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover.
SMS Blitz was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy that was launched in 1862. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Blitz served during all three wars of German unification in the 1860s and early 1870s. The ship was present during the Battle of Heligoland in May 1864 during the Second Schleswig War, but was too slow to engage the Danish squadron. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, she operated against the Kingdom of Hanover in the North Sea, but did not see extensive action. In August 1870, Blitz and three other light vessels attacked the French blockade force in the Baltic Sea during the Franco-Prussian War, but they withdrew without either side scoring any hits. During her peacetime career, Blitz was sent to the Mediterranean Sea twice, in 1863 and 1867–1868. She was employed as a fisheries protection ship, a guard ship, and a survey vessel in the early 1870s, before being decommissioned in 1875 and broken up for scrap in 1878. Parts of her machinery were reused in the gunboat Wolf.
SMS Basilisk was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy that was launched in 1862. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Basilisk served during all three wars of German unification in the 1860s and early 1870s. The ship was present during the Battle of Heligoland in May 1864 during the Second Schleswig War, but was too slow to engage the Danish squadron. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, Basilisk was stationed in the North Sea to help defend the coast, but she did not see action during either conflict. Between 1873 and 1875, she was employed experimentally as the first torpedo-armed warship of the German fleet. Basilisk was decommissioned in 1875, renamed "Mine Barge No. 1", and converted into a naval mine storage hulk. The details of her fate are unrecorded, but she was still in service in that capacity at least as late as 1900. Sometime thereafter, she was broken up.
SMS Preussischer Adler was a paddle steamer originally built in the mid-1840s for use on a packet route between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire in the Baltic Sea. She was requisitioned by the Prussian Navy during the First Schleswig War in 1848 and converted into an aviso, the first vessel of the type commissioned by Prussia. During the war, she took part in an inconclusive action with the Danish brig St. Croix, the first naval battle of the Prussian fleet. After the war, she was disarmed and returned to her commercial role, operating uneventfully on the Stettin–St. Petersburg route until 1862, when the expansion of the Prussian Eastern Railway had rendered the maritime route superfluous. The ship was purchased by the Prussian Navy that year and rearmed, once again as an aviso.
The Nix class was a pair of avisos built for the Prussian Navy in the early 1850s. The class comprised two ships: SMS Nix and Salamander. They were ordered as part of a modest program to strengthen the fleet at the urging of Prince Adalbert of Prussia in the immediate aftermath of the First Schleswig War, which had demonstrated that the weak fleet could not challenge the ability of Denmark to impose a blockade of Prussian and German ports. They were small vessels with a shallow draft, since they were intended to operate close to shore to defend Prussia's coast. Neither vessel saw significant service in the Prussian Navy before being sold to the British Royal Navy in exchange for the frigate Thetis in 1855. They were renamed Weser and Recruit, respectively, and the former saw action during the Crimean War in the Black Sea later in 1855. The two ships saw little activity after their sale to Britain, with Recruit being laid up in 1861 and Weser following in 1865. Recruit was sold for merchant service in 1870, while Weser was discarded in 1873.
SMS Gefion was a sailing frigate, originally serving the Danish Navy. In 1849, during the First Schleswig War, she fell into the hands of Schleswig-Holstein under the name of Eckernförde. The ship joined the Reichsflotte in 1850. When it was dissolved in 1852, Prussia bought her for its navy and her old name was restored.
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