Wilhelmshaven is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the western side of the Jade Bight, a bay of the North Sea, and has a population of 76,089. Wilhelmshaven is the centre of the "Jade Bay" business region and is Germany's main military port.
Prince Heinrich Wilhelm Adalbert of Prussia was a son of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Landgravine Marie Anna of Hesse-Homburg. He was a naval theorist and admiral. He was instrumental during the Revolutions of 1848 in founding the first unified German fleet, the Reichsflotte. During the 1850s he helped to establish the Prussian Navy.
The Prussian Navy, officially the Royal Prussian Navy, was the naval force of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1701 to 1867.
The Jade Bight, also known as Jade Bay; German: Jadebusen) is a bight or bay on the North Sea coast of Germany. It was formerly known simply as (the) Jade or Jahde. Because of the very low input of freshwater, it is classified as a bay rather than an estuary.
JadeWeserPort is Germany's largest harbour project. It is supported by the states of Lower Saxony and Bremen. This new container port is located at Wilhelmshaven at the Jade Bight, a bay on the North Sea coast. It has a natural water depth in excess of 18 m. Container ships with a length of 430 metres (1,410 ft) and 16.5 metres (54 ft) draught will be able to call the JadeWeserPort at any tide. Construction work was begun in March 2008. The port was opened on 21 September 2012. However, due to the Great Recession, the port wasn't given the warmest of welcomes, and very little TEU traffic flowed through the brand new harbour. But the container handling could be raised from 60,000 in 2014 to 426,700 twenty-foot equivalent unit in 2015. The yearly capacity of the port is 2,700,000 TEU.
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.
SMS Prinz Adalbert was an ironclad warship of the Prussian Navy and later the Imperial fleet. She was built in Bordeaux, France in 1864 for the Confederate States Navy. Prussia bought her during the Second Schleswig War against Denmark, but she was not delivered until after the war. She was designed as an armored ram but also carried three guns: one 21 cm (8.3 in) and two 17 cm (6.7 in) pieces in armored turrets. She was named after Prince Adalbert of Prussia, an early proponent of Prussian naval power.
Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven was a German shipbuilding company in Wilhelmshaven, founded in 1871 and closed in 1918. Together with Kaiserliche Werft Danzig and Kaiserliche Werft Kiel it was one of three shipyards which solely produced warships for the Preußische Marine and the following German Kaiserliche Marine. With the end of World War I all three imperial shipyards were closed, but the Wilhelmshaven shipyard was reopened in 1919, first as Reichsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven, and after 1935 named Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven.
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.
The Prussian Ministry of the Navy (Marineministerium) grew out of that established by the Frankfurt National Assembly (1848–1849) for its ‘Imperial Fleet' Reichsflotte. From 1866 it served additionally as the Navy Department of the North German Confederation.
The Marinestation der Nordsee of the German Kaiserliche Marine at Wilhelmshaven came out of the efforts of the navy of the North German Confederation. The land was obtained for the Confederation from the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg by Prince Adalbert of Prussia through the Jade Treaty of 1853. The naval station was established on 19 May 1870, and became the ‘Imperial’ station with the proclamation of the German Empire in 1871.
SMS Oldenburg was the fourth vessel of the Helgoland class of dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy. Oldenburg's keel was laid in March 1909 at the Schichau-Werke dockyard in Danzig. She was launched on 30 June 1910 and was commissioned into the fleet on 1 May 1912. The ship was equipped with twelve 30.5 cm (12 in) guns in six twin turrets, and had a top speed of 21.2 knots. Oldenburg was assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career, including World War I.
Otto Daniel Livonius was a Vizeadmiral of the German Imperial Navy, serving in the predecessor Prussian Navy and the Navy of the North German Confederation.
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 Augusta was a wooden steam corvette built in the 1860s, the lead ship of the Augusta class. She had one sister ship, Victoria; the ships were armed with a battery of fourteen guns. Augusta was laid down in 1863 at the Arman Brothers shipyard in Bordeaux, France, and was launched in early 1864. Originally ordered by the Confederate States Navy, her delivery was blocked by the French Emperor Napoleon III, and she was instead sold to the Prussian Navy in May 1864. The Prussians had been in search of vessels to strengthen their fleet before and during the Second Schleswig War against Denmark, but Augusta arrived too late to see action in the conflict.
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 Grille was an aviso of the Prussian Navy built in France in the mid-1850s as part of a naval expansion program directed by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who saw the need for a stronger fleet. She was authorized in 1855 in the aftermath of the First Schleswig War, which had demonstrated the weakness of the Prussian fleet. Grille was the first screw propeller-driven steamship to be built for Prussia; all earlier steam-powered vessels had been paddle steamers.
SMS Loreley was an aviso of the Prussian Navy built in the late 1850s. Built as a paddle steamer, since the Prussian naval command was not convinced of the reliability of screw propellers, she was the first Prussian warship to be fitted with a domestically-produced marine steam engine. The ship carried a light armament of two 12-pound guns and had a top speed of 10.5 knots. Loreley was intended to serve as the flagship of the gunboat flotillas that formed the bulk of the Prussian fleet in the 1850s.
