The First German Fleet
In one of the window niches on the ground floor of the Military Museum
(Zeughaus) at Berlin lies an old and dilapidated 8-pounder gun. In its
deep and disfiguring coat of rust it is an inconspicuous object, and,
amid that rich and varied collection of artillery from all the ages,
the eye of the casual visitor will not rest upon it for more than a
disparaging moment. And yet few of the treasures of the museum have a
more interesting history to tell, for it is the sole remaining relic
of the first serious experiment in naval and colonial policy ever made
by a German ruler. On an elevation rising from the beach of Cape Three
Points, on the Gold Coast, now British territory, are still to be seen
the crumbling ruins of the fort of Gross-Friedrichsburg, built there
by the Elector of Brandenburg in 1681, and when the German corvette
_Sophie_ visited the spot, with pious purpose, in 1884, this corroded
gun was unearthed from beneath the weeds and brushwood that have
overgrown the decayed ramparts.
Frederick William, the Great Elector, has been exemplary for many of
his successors. Frederick the Great rightly considered him the most
able of the previous Princes of the house of Hohenzollern, while the
present German Emperor has made a special cult of his memory, and
assuredly had a symbolic intention when he appeared at a fancy-dress
ball disguised as the first of his ancestors who equipped a fleet and
founded a colony.
When Frederick William was called to the Brandenburg throne in 1641
at the age of twenty, Germany was still in the throes of the Thirty
Years' War, and no part of the Empire had suffered more than his
Electorate from the consequences of that unspeakable calamity. Of all
the causes which have contributed to impede the normal development
of the painstaking and industrious German race, none had so malign
an influence as that stupendous conflict. It not merely delayed
civilization, but over vast tracts of country positively exterminated
it. At the close of the war many once flourishing towns had absolutely
disappeared from the face of the earth, and where formerly a numerous
peasantry had tilled its fertile fields a howling wilderness extended
in all directions as far as the eye could reach. In North Germany
to-day an apparently purposeless pond, or a detached clump of venerable
trees, still shows where once a village stood, and bears mute witness
to the ruthless barbarity with which the religious partition of Central
Europe was brought about.
When an end was put to the bloodshed and rapine by the Peace of
Westphalia (1648), the population of Germany had been reduced to one
half--in some districts to one tenth--of its former dimensions. Many
portions of the Empire are even to-day not so thickly inhabited as they
were before the war. Industry and commerce had migrated to England,
France, and Holland; and Leipzig and Frankfort were the only German
towns that had retained any trade worthy of mention. The Hansa, with
its fleets of warships and merchantmen, was but a memory of the past.
Königsberg had no longer a ship of its own; the trade of Dantzig and
Stettin was almost entirely carried in foreign bottoms; and even
Hamburg, which directly had been but comparatively little touched by
the thirty years of chaos and turmoil, and had benefited from its
exceptional connection with England, was left commercially crippled.
At a Hanse Parliament held in 1630, only Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen
were represented. Germany had been so drained of money that barter had
generally taken the place of purchase by coin; wages were paid in the
products of labour, grain, ore, and manufactured goods, and even state
officials in some cases received their salaries in kind.
Even before the war broke out, Brandenburg, a country of barren soil
and few natural resources, had stood far below the rest of Germany
both materially and intellectually. In 1600 the twin towns, Berlin
and Cöln, which faced one another from opposite banks of the Spree,
and have since been merged to form the colossal capital of the new
Empire, contained together no more than 14,000 souls. Brandenburg and
Frankfort-on-Oder each had a population of 10,000. Only two other
towns, Stendal and Salzwedel, could boast more than 5,000 inhabitants.
And it was of the mere ruins of this country that Frederick William
formed the foundation-stone of the Prussian Kingdom and of the German
Empire of to-day.
If the Thirty Years' War had produced any form of national
consolidation, if it had increased the authority of the Empire or
resulted in the absorption of the smaller States by the larger, that
would at least have been some compensation to Germany for its long
and terrible ordeal. But exactly the opposite was the case. The war
ceased simply because no one had the will or the strength to continue
it, and a miserable compromise was the result. The only gainers were
the Princes, who, as the wielders of the armed forces, had been able to
enhance their power, and now acquired a larger measure of independence
in their relationships to the Emperor. Their number remained legion.
In the Germany mapped out by the Westphalian negotiators there were
eight electors, sixty-nine spiritual and ninety-six temporal Princes,
sixty-one imperial towns, and a multitude of Counts and Barons
exercising various degrees of sovereign power.
Frederick William's claim to the title "Great," which was bestowed upon
him by his own generation, has been contested, but may be allowed to
pass. As military leader, diplomatist, organizer, and administrator,
he certainly had unusual gifts. Above all, he excelled in duplicity
and treachery. The most eminent living German historian has said
of him that "both in internal and external politics he acted with
an unscrupulousness so manifest that it cannot be palliated," and
can find no better excuse for his many deeds of "faithlessness" and
"double-dealing" than that, in this respect, he was merely "the master
of the diplomatic art of his day." The Elector was actuated solely
by his own personal and dynastic interests, and was utterly devoid
of "German" patriotism, for in return for the liberal subsidies on
which he prospered, he undertook, in a secret treaty, to support
the candidature of the French King or Dauphin for the Imperial
German throne, and he was mainly responsible for the truce which
left Strasburg in French hands for nearly two centuries. During the
incessant wars which filled up most of his reign he fought both with
and against every other belligerent. His sword was always at the
disposal of the highest bidder, either of hard cash or of territorial
extension, and by adroit choice of the moment for changing sides
he generally made a profitable bargain. True, he was obliged to
restore the western portion of Pomerania which he had conquered from
the Swedes, but he obtained a much more important acquisition--the
recognition of his full sovereignty in what is now East Prussia.
That region had been wrested from the Slavs by the German orders of
chivalry, founded at the time of the Crusades, and had subsequently
become an evangelical duchy, ruled by a junior branch of the house of
Hohenzollern, as a fief of the Kingdom of Poland. On the extinction of
the ducal line, it had reverted to the rulers of Brandenburg, and by a
timely sale of his military assistance, first to the Swedes and then
to the Poles, the Great Elector induced both to admit his unrestricted
and unqualified rights of sovereignty in the duchy. His successor
persuaded the Emperor to agree to his assumption of the kingly title
for this territory, and it is an interesting fact--especially in view
of the last development of the German Empire, which in its present
constitutional form and in much else is dependent upon Catholic
support--that this elevation was largely brought about by the
intervention of two Jesuit fathers. It was from the Kingdom of Prussia
which was thus established, and which was a completely independent
State altogether outside the competencies of the Holy Roman Empire,
that arose the Hohenzollern ascendency in Germany, and round it that
the new German Empire crystallized. For this reason the episode is
quite germane to our present purpose.
The Germans excel as diligent pupils and patient imitators, and the
Great Elector was no exception to this rule. From his fourteenth to
his eighteenth year he had been educated under the care of Frederick
Henry, the Statthalter of Holland, then the chief Sea-Power of the
world, from whom he had imbibed many ideas as to the importance
of navies, colonies, and sea-borne trade. His connection with the
Netherlands was maintained and strengthened by his marriage with an
Orange Princess, the aunt of William III. of England, and many Dutchmen
entered his service. Among them was an ex-admiral, Gijsels by name, who
assiduously kept alive the dreams of sea-power which the Elector had
brought back with him from Holland. It was on his prompting that, in
1659, when Frederick William was embroiled with the Swedes, and found
his operations hampered by the lack of a fleet, an enquiry as to the
possibility of remedying this deficiency was ordered by the Elector.
The investigation resulted, for the time being, only in the compilation
of a memorandum as to a "Brandenburg-Imperial admiralty," and some
fruitless attempts to obtain ships in the Netherlands.
But Gijsels' projects went far beyond a mere fleet. All the world
was then discussing the colonizing activity of the western European
States, and Frederick William's predecessor on the Electoral throne
had conceived abortive plans for founding an East Indian trading
company. What the ex-admiral proposed to the Elector in 1660 was, that
Brandenburg, Austria, and Spain should combine for the purpose of
securing a colonial ascendency, which was to be arrived at by playing
off England, France, and Holland against one another. Negotiations to
this end seem actually to have been commenced, but they broke down
over the jealous suspicions of the diplomatists approached, and the
perpetual turning of the European kaleidoscope.
During the next fifteen years the idea of a Brandenburg navy appears to
have been allowed to sleep. In the meantime a very remarkable book had
been published, which should be mentioned here because it contains the
essential elements of the programme of the most modern naval agitation
in Germany. The author was Johann Becher, by profession a chemist, but
in his leisure a political seer of the type of Friedrich List, whose
great forerunner he was. His work, "Political Discourse on the Causes
of the Rise and Decline of Towns and Countries," was published in 1667.
Becher had travelled much, and he wrote:
"In Germany there is hardly any longer trade or commerce; all business
is going to ruin; no money is to be found with either great or small;
on the other hand look at Holland, how rich she is and how she grows
richer every day; that could not be if she feared the sea as much as
our nation of High Germany."
Becher then addressed to his countrymen the following impassioned
exhortation:
"Up, then, brave German; act so that on the map, besides New Spain,
New France, New England, there shall in the future be found also
New Germany. You are as little lacking as other nations in the
intelligence and resolution to do such things; yea, you have all
that is necessary; you are soldiers and peasants, alert, laborious,
diligent, and indefatigable."
Becher had held positions at various German Courts, and it is not
improbable that his appeal fell upon sympathetic ears among the
entourage of the Great Elector. But however that may be, the war of
Denmark and Brandenburg against Sweden, which broke out in 1675,
did actually, for the first time in history, witness a fleet at the
disposal of a member of the dynasty that now occupies the imperial
throne in Germany. True, it was not yet the actual property of the
Elector, but of Benjamin Raule, an enterprising Dutch merchant, who
had migrated to Denmark, and now laid a naval project before the
Brandenburg sovereign. His proposals were readily acceded to, and he
received permission to fit out a flotilla of two frigates and ten
smaller vessels, and to operate with them under the Brandenburg flag
against the Swedes. The Elector merely stipulated that he should
receive 6 per cent. of the value of all prizes captured. Raule's
vessels rendered substantial service in the capture of Stettin, and of
that much-coveted strip of the Pomeranian coast which was so essential
to the realisation of Frederick William's maritime aspirations.
The Elector's hopes were disappointed by the Treaty of St. Germain,
under which he was compelled to restore this precious booty to the
intrusive Scandinavians, but in the meantime his naval plans had taken
a wider scope in fresh contracts with the resourceful Dutchman. In
the first of these, Raule undertook, for a monthly subsidy of 5,000
thalers,[5] to maintain a fleet of eight frigates and a fire-ship,
mounting altogether 182 guns. Shortly afterwards the terms of the
agreement were extended, and at the commencement of the year 1680,
twenty-eight ships of war, with a total of 502 guns, were flying the
red eagle of Brandenburg.
Though robbed by the peace of the coast-line and seaports on which he
had counted as the base of his maritime power and the recruiting ground
for his fleet, the Elector did not allow himself to be discouraged,
and he very soon found fresh work for his little flotilla to do. The
greatest master of German mercenaries at that date, he had, a few
years previously, hired a portion of his army to Spain for use against
the French. As repeated applications for the price of this support
had proved unavailing, he now determined to collect the debt, which
amounted to 1,800,000 thalers, by forcible distraint.
Accordingly six ships, which were followed at an interval of some
months by three others, were sent out to attempt to intercept the
silver fleet on its way to the Spanish Netherlands. The vessels were
almost without exception commanded by Dutchmen, but were mainly manned
by Germans, though the crews included many English, Dutch, Danish and
Norwegian sailors. Naturally the soldiers carried on board were drawn
from the Brandenburg army; and orders were given that they should
be trained in ship's work "because we are disposed to use the same
permanently for the navy."
Though the flotilla did not fulfil either its immediate or its ultimate
purpose, the expedition was notable for two reasons. In the first
place, a large Spanish warship, the _Carolus Secundus_, with a valuable
cargo of lace on board, was captured, and so became the first war
vessel that was actually the property of a Hohenzollern State. In the
second place, the quest of the Spanish silver resulted in a sea-fight,
which, in respect both of the force engaged and the losses sustained,
still heads the record of naval warfare under a Hohenzollern flag.
A detachment of four ships, cruising in the neighbourhood of Cape St.
Vincent, sighted a fleet of a dozen Spanish frigates, which had put
out for the special purpose of chasing the Germans from the sea. The
Brandenburg commander, thinking that this was the anxiously-expected
silver flotilla, bore down upon it, and did not realise his mistake
till it was too late to avoid something of a conflict. Before he could
succeed in manoeuvring his ships out of range of his overwhelmingly
superior enemy, he had lost ten men killed and thirty wounded; and
since that day Germany had fought no more terrible battle on the sea
until the war broke out in 1914.
Another section of the Elector's fleet cruised for several months in
West Indian waters without achieving much result, while the retaliatory
measures adopted by the Spaniards secured a safe passage for the silver
ships and rendered it prudent for Frederick William to abandon his
daring and risky enterprise.
Meanwhile the Elector had allotted his infant navy a task of a
different character. Soon after entering the service of Brandenburg,
Raule had drawn up plans of colonization, and in the same year in
which the fruitless search for the silver convoy began, he obtained
permission to try his luck on the Gold Coast, and got together a
syndicate to finance the undertaking. The Elector was wary, and
declined to risk pecuniary participation, but he ordered that "twenty
good healthy musketeers, together with two non-commissioned officers,"
should be placed under Raule's command. One of the principal objects of
the expedition was to secure a share in the profitable trade in slaves
which was then carried on between the West Coast of Africa and North
America, but modern German historians for the most part ignore this
feature of the enterprise.
The two vessels despatched on this errand reached the Gold Coast in
safety, but aroused the resentment of the Dutch already settled there,
who confiscated one of them, and compelled the other to quit African
waters. However, the leader of the expedition had by that time managed
to conclude what served the purposes of a treaty with certain native
chiefs, who thereby placed themselves under the suzerainty of the
Elector, and consented to the erection of a fort in the district under
their control.
On the strength of this questionable document, an "African Company" for
the "improvement of shipping and commerce wherein the best prosperity
of a country consists," was called into existence in the year 1682.
In the charter of incorporation, the Elector promised to protect
the Company against "all and everyone who may undertake to trouble,
incommode, or to any extent injure the same in its actions in free
places on the coasts of Guinea and Angola"; but both the naval and the
military commanders were charged to keep at a respectful distance from
"all Dutch Company fortresses, as well as those of other potentates,
such as England, France, Denmark, etc." The capital of the Company
was the modest sum of 50,000 thalers. Of this Frederick William
contributed only 8,000, and the Electoral Prince 2,000 thalers, while
almost half of the total was supplied by Raule, who had by now become
"Director-General of the Brandenburg Navy."
The two frigates in which the second Gold Coast expedition shipped
cast anchor off Cape Three Points on December 27th, 1682, but some
difficulty was experienced in finding the chiefs who had "signed" the
provisional treaty and who were each to have received a ratification
engrossed in letters of gold, "a silver-gilt cup, and a portrait of
his Electoral Highness." Frederick William had also issued instructions
that his black allies and their wives were to be entertained on board
the warships.
After a great deal of trouble, some other chieftains of the "Moors,"
as they are called in the official correspondence relating to this
matter, were hunted out and induced to contract a second and definite
treaty; and on January 1st, 1683, with due ceremony and much beating of
drums, blowing of trumpets, and firing of guns, the Brandenburg flag
was hoisted over "the first German colony." The flagstaff had been
planted on a little eminence, which was subsequently, with all speed,
transformed into the fort Gross-Friedrichsburg, and no doubt the rusty
cannon now in the Zeughaus at Berlin is one of the half-dozen which had
been mounted on the hill on the previous day in preparation for the
great occasion.
In the following year the headquarters of the African Company was
removed from Pillau to Emden. This latter town was not situated on
Brandenburg soil, and the manner in which the Elector secured a footing
in it is both instructive and characteristic of his easy methods of
intervening and making a good bargain wherever an opportunity presented
itself. It chanced that at that time the Estates of East Frisia were at
loggerheads with their ruler, and they appealed to Frederick William
for assistance. Nothing loth, he landed a force by night, and by a
surprise attack seized the castle of Greetsiel, which thus became his
naval base. By an agreement with the town of Emden he subsequently
acquired the right to station within its walls a "compagnie de marine"
for the service of the African Corporation. This force, which was
gradually increased to three, and temporarily to four, companies, and
ultimately received the name of the "Marine Battalion," was drawn upon
to man both the ships and the forts in Africa.
The transfer to Emden brought other advantages besides an ice-free
port, a base on the North Sea, and an abbreviation of the route to
Gross-Friedrichsburg, for the East Frisian Estates and the Elector of
Cologne were both persuaded to invest largely in the African Company in
consequence of the change.
In the year of the Emden agreement, the Brandenburg Navy was formally
founded by the establishment of an "Admiralty" at Berlin. The Cabinet
order by which this institution was created shows that the fleet then
in full possession of the State comprised 10 ships, with 240 guns,
while Raule was still under contract to provide 17 further vessels. The
permanent personnel consisted of 1 vice-commodore, 5 naval captains,
3 officers of Marines, 12 mates, and 120 seamen. In 1686, the Elector
took the Company entirely into his own hands, and simultaneously
acquired a station on the island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies,
as a place of call for the ships engaged in the slave traffic. He had
also at that time made preparations for forming an East Indian trading
company (at a much earlier date he had unsuccessfully attempted to
acquire Tranquebar, on the Coromandel Coast, from the Danes) and for
fitting out an expedition to China and Japan. These schemes, however,
came to nothing.
The settlement at Cape Three Points had by no means an easy existence.
Fever made fearful ravages among the garrison, which, when the first
reliefs arrived, after an interval of nearly a year and threequarters,
had been reduced by sickness from ninety to sixteen men. Everything
that was needed for the construction of the fort, even building-stone,
had to be brought thousands of miles across the sea from Germany. The
Dutch traders in the neighbourhood had at once raised objections to
the new colony, and, as their protests were unheeded, stirred up the
natives against its members. It was only after prolonged negotiations
at The Hague that the Elector secured a full recognition of his right
to the settlement. And none the less the Dutch West India Company
continued to harass the German colonists, appropriating their ships,
and turning them out of a couple of subsidiary fortifications which
they had erected at other points along the coast. Gross-Friedrichsburg
and Taccroma, another of the four Brandenburg stations on the Guinea
littoral, for several years maintained themselves only by the menace of
their guns. These untoward events are believed to have preyed upon the
mind of the Great Elector, and to have hastened his end. At the time of
his death, in April, 1688, Brandenburg and Holland were on the brink of
war over the Gold Coast affair.
His successor on the Electoral throne in one very important respect
reaped what Frederick William had sown, for he obtained the title
of King of Prussia, by virtue of which, far more than from any
specifically imperial prerogatives, William II. holds his present
power in Germany. Frederick I. was a vain man, who was more interested
in appearances than in realities, and cared more for the pomp and
ceremonies of Court life than for the solid business of colonisation
and slave-trading. As a source of revenue, with which to defray the
cost of his empty extravagances, the African undertaking was feebly
encouraged to continue its work; but, deprived of the directing brain
and the stimulating enthusiasm of its founder, it soon sickened and
languished. Accada and Taccarary, the two settlements which had been
seized by the Dutch, were delivered up after a lengthy squabble, but
the fortifications of the latter had been destroyed, and they were not
rebuilt.
At first the trade of the colony, which had called into existence a
flourishing shipyard at Havelberg, near the junction of the Navel and
the Elbe, was fairly satisfactory, and the spirit of the Brandenburg
Navy was raised by the successful operations of a couple of its
frigates against French merchantmen, but in 1697 the Company fell upon
evil days. It suffered pecuniary loss, both through the capture of
some of its ships by the French and through the peculations of several
officials, whose multiple dishonesty hints at a scandalous laxity of
control. The invaluable Raule, too, fell into disfavour, and spent
four years in gaol, though he was reinstated in his position on being
liberated. At last the Company was no longer able to send out ships of
its own, and for eight years, during the War of the Spanish Succession,
the garrison of Gross-Friedrichsburg was left entirely to itself.
For a considerable portion of that time five large Brandenburg ships
of war were rotting in the harbours of Emden and Hamburg, when they
might have been much more profitably employed in attempting to keep
up communications with the perishing colonists. When at last reliefs
reached Gross-Friedrichsburg only seven men out of an original force of
1,700 were fit for duty.
What little credit attaches to the last days of the first German
colony is the due of Jan Cuny, a native chief, who had placed himself
under Brandenburg protection, apparently for the purpose of obtaining
support against the English and Dutch settlements of the vicinity,
with both of which he was at feud. It is characteristic of the period
that, while Prussians were fighting shoulder to shoulder with English
and Dutch on the continent of Europe, they were in open conflict with
them on the West Coast of Africa. Frederick I. at one time thought
it necessary to protest, through his Minister at London, against the
difficulties which the English were causing him on the Gold Coast.
All the trouble seems to have arisen out of the demand made by a
Dutch official at Axim for the surrender of a female relative of Cuny
whom he claimed as a slave. Jan was evidently a man of considerable
parts. He led his army with great discretion and resourcefulness, and
no doubt the Prussians at Gross-Friedrichsburg thought it to their
advantage to be on good terms with so formidable a warrior, especially
as he was the sworn foe of their jealous European neighbours. At any
rate, the relations between Cuny and the fort became both cordial and
confiding, and when the last Governor of Gross-Friedrichsburg, Du Bois,
discouraged by the indifference and neglect of the home authorities,
sailed for Emden to enter remonstrances, he entrusted the protection of
the colony to his black ally.
Du Bois arrived in Europe only to find that the doom of
Gross-Friedrichsburg was already irrevocably sealed. The parsimonious
Frederick William I., the father of Frederick the Great, had ascended
the Prussian throne, and his careful mind, completely absorbed by plans
of immediate economy, was incapable of taking such flights into the
distance and the future as were necessary for the appreciation of the
value of colonial policy. The African settlements had been doing badly
and had become unremunerative, and his only thought was to dispose
of them as speedily as possible for hard cash, which could be either
hoarded or spent on his solitary extravagance--seven-foot grenadiers.
Immediately after his accession, he instructed his representative in
London that he was prepared to "transfer his forts on the coast of
Guinea to anyone else upon easy conditions." He was not long in finding
a purchaser in that very Dutch West India Company which had from
the outset been a thorn in the side of the Great Elector's colonial
enterprise. On November 22nd, 1717, Gross-Friedrichsburg and its
dependent territory passed from Hohenzollern rule for the sum of 6,000
ducats and twelve negro boys, of whom it was stipulated that six should
be adorned with golden chains.
The signing of the contract and its execution were, however, two very
different things. The redoubtable Jan Cuny had not been reckoned with,
and when two Dutch vessels arrived to take over the fort they found
him in possession and flying the Prussian flag. The order for the
transfer of the fort was shown to his emissaries, who, after a good
deal of delay, were sent on board the ships, but this he flatly refused
to recognise, declaring that he would yield up his trust only to a
vessel belonging to the King of Prussia. The commander of the Dutch
expedition, Captain van der Hoeven, thought he would make short work
of this insolent chieftain, and landed a body of fifty men to take the
fort by storm. But Cuny once again showed the generalship which had
raised him to the eminence of a Prussian deputy-governor. A force of
1,800 natives fusilladed the landing party from an ambuscade and killed
nearly every one of them. Hoeven was only able to save himself by
swimming back to his ship, with three bullets in his body, and retired
to the nearest Dutch settlement to excogitate a fresh plan of campaign.
Cuny, however, was flushed by his success, and not at all inclined to
give up the prestige which he derived from a fortress bristling with
guns and well furnished with small arms and ammunition. For seven long
years he held out, repulsing the repeated attacks of the Dutch, and it
was only when his supplies were exhausted and an overwhelming force had
been put into the field against him, that he withdrew from his defences
and vanished into the jungle from which he had come.
Simultaneously with Gross-Friedrichsburg, there was transferred from
the Prussian King to the Dutch Company yet another African colony,
of which mention has yet to be made. This was the island of Arguin,
which lies off the coast of what is now French territory to the south
of Cape Blanco, and in some maps is given the ominous name of Agadir.
The islet, which was one of the principal centres of the gum trade,
had been first occupied by the Portuguese in 1441, but had passed by
conquest to Holland, and from the latter to France. After the peace
of Nymegen, in 1678, however, the French Senegal Company found itself
unable to maintain a garrison in Arguin, and obtained permission from
Louis XIV. to blow up the fort which had been erected there. The
island then fell into the hands of the native ruler of Arguin, on the
mainland, and remained subject to him till two ships of the Great
Elector appeared off its coasts in October, 1685.
On the strength of a treaty concluded by the commander of the
expedition with the King of Arguin, Frederick William seems to have
claimed jurisdiction right along the coast of Africa from the Canary
Isles to the Senegal River. These pretensions were not allowed to pass
undisputed, and, towards the end of 1687, a couple of French vessels
appeared off the fort and demanded its evacuation by the Germans.
As this was refused they made an attempt to seize it by force, but,
meeting with a stubborn resistance, abandoned the attack, and, after
an unsuccessful endeavour to assert their rights during the peace
negotiations at Ryswick, the French seemed to reconcile themselves to
the new situation, for they even proposed commercial co-operation with
the occupants of the Arguin fort.
After the death of the Great Elector, Arguin suffered, like
Gross-Friedrichsburg, through the indifference of his successor, and
the difficulty of communication arising from the War of the Spanish
Succession. When a relief ship arrived in 1714, it found that the
Governor had been captured by the natives, with whom he had quarrelled;
and the remnant of the Arguin garrison was in so deplorable a
condition, that "in a few days they must have perished of hunger."
The transfer of Arguin to the Dutch proved as difficult as that of
Gross-Friedrichsburg. In 1717 the French had renewed their claims to
the island, and, a few years later, the Senegal Company, landing 700
men and heavy guns, laid siege to the fort. After holding out for a
few weeks, the commander, Jan Wynen, a Dutchman, withdrew secretly by
night with his force in order to escape the humiliation of a formal
surrender, and when its new owners at last arrived to take possession
of it the colony was actually in French hands. It was in both cases a
foreigner who last kept the flag flying over what were to be the only
German colonies established till the final quarter of the nineteenth
century. With the colonies disappeared the force with which they had
been won, the fleet, and it too had to wait long, though not quite so
long, before it experienced a revival.
It is interesting to reflect how the history of the world might have
been changed if the Great Elector's two immediate successors had
united to his far-reaching schemes of "world-policy" his determination
in carrying them out, and had bequeathed to the greater Frederick
prosperous colonial possessions and a formidable navy. As it was,
the naval episodes of the reign of this gifted monarch only show how
pitifully and completely the dawning sea-power of his grandfather had
passed away.
In the Seven Years' War, the shores of Prussia were continually
ravaged by Swedish frigates, and as nothing could be effected by the
armed fishing boats and coasting vessels which were all that could be
pitted against them, Field-Marshal Lehwald, to whom the protection
of that part of Prussia had been entrusted, appealed for help to the
corporation of merchants at Stettin. That body responded with energy
and promptitude, and, with great haste, a flotilla of four galliots,
four large fishing boats, and four coasting vessels were transformed
into "ships of war." In August, 1759, this improvised fleet ventured
out of the Oder to attack the Swedes, but it was so completely
overthrown after several days' fighting that the experiment was never
repeated.
In the meanwhile Frederick had been inveigled into another maritime
adventure, which was to prove just as barren of positive results. Early
in the war several Englishmen communicated to the King their readiness
to fit out privateers to prey on the commerce of Austria and Sweden,
both of which countries had seized Prussian merchantmen. They protested
in all cases that their principal motive was a desire to serve the
cause of a monarch whom they admired and revered, and who was, as a
matter of fact, at that time the ally of England. But at the same time
they promised him "prodigious profits" from the enterprise, and it was
admittedly the latter consideration which induced the King to listen to
their proposals. Though his own Ministers expressed strong doubts, and
the English Government urged that he would run the risk of embroiling
himself with neutral States, he issued a number of letters of marque.
The advice which had been given him proved to have been only too well
founded. Not only were there no "prodigious profits," but the blunders
of the royal officials and the indiscretions of the ships under his
flag involved the King in voluminous diplomatic correspondence and long
and fruitless litigation.
To accelerate the process of destroying the enemy's trade, a number
of blank letters of marque, ministerially signed and stamped with
the royal seal, were sent out to the Prussian Minister in London,
and he somewhat imprudently lent a couple of these to an interesting
adventurer, named Erskine Douglas, who said that he wished to show
them to shipowners with whom he was in treaty for the equipment
of privateers. Douglas claimed to be a relative of the Prussian
Field-Marshal Keith, who was of Scottish origin, and he brought letters
of introduction from well-known members of the English nobility, so
the Minister may perhaps be excused for entrusting the documents to
him. But his confidence was gravely abused, for Douglas, having come
to an agreement with the firm of Dunbar and Eyre, filled in the forms
on his own responsibility, and two privateers were sent out with these
fraudulent credentials.
Shortly afterwards, one of these ships, the _Lissa_, put into Emden
with a rich Swedish prize. Lying in the harbour was an English
man-of-war, and the captain of this ship, declaring that the English
sailors on board the _Lissa_ were all either deserters or men who had
bound themselves to serve in the British Navy, required that they
should be given up to him. As compliance was refused, he went on board
the _Lissa_ with an armed escort, and, disregarding all the protests of
its captain, took away with him twenty-six members of the crew. This
action was regarded by Frederick as an infraction of Prussian rights
of sovereignty, and representations to that effect were made in London
before it was discovered in how irregular a manner the _Lissa_ had
become possessed of her papers. The matter was then discreetly allowed
to drop. The Swedes, for their part, contested the legality of the
capture, but the Prussian Government ruled that the letter of marque
was valid, although it had not actually been issued by royal authority.
At the same time Prussia advanced the strange view that, in the event
of the owners of the _Lissa_ having had cognizance of the deception
which had been practised, King Frederick was entitled to the whole
value of the prize. Instructions were, however, given that the _Lissa_
should be deprived of her charter, but before they could be executed
she had sailed for England.
Another of Douglas's privateersmen, the _Prince Ferdinand_, under a
Captain Merryfield, had betaken herself to the Mediterranean, where,
in a nine-months' cruise, she captured thirteen prizes, but caused
so much confusion that the King thought it wiser to put a stop to
the whole undertaking. The immediate ground for this step was the
complaints of the Ottoman Government, with which Frederick was
negotiating with a view to obtaining its support in the prosecution
of the war. The appropriation of a couple of female negro slaves
belonging to a pasha, who were on board one of the ships captured by
Merryfield, seems to have had at least as much weight in the Turkish
grievance as the more substantial losses of the merchants of Salonika.
As Prussia had no territory and very little diplomatic representation
on the shores of the Mediterranean, Merryfield was obliged to take
his prizes into neutral harbours and place them in the custody of the
English Consuls. They were the subjects of endless law suits, tedious
international wrangling, and practically no profits. Merryfield's wild
career was terminated by a charge of secretly selling neutral goods
from one of his prizes to his own advantage. At the instance of the
Prussian Government he was flung into gaol at Malta. He remained in
prison five years, and even at the end of that term would not have
regained his liberty if the Grand Master of the Maltese Knights had not
refused to pay for his maintenance any longer.
Hardly less chequered were the fortunes of Captain Wake, the only
regularly accredited Prussian privateer of whom anything is known.
The operations of his ship, the _Embden_, in the Mediterranean also
resulted in ceaseless bickerings, and he was delayed in Cagliari for
two years by disputes of one sort or another. At last, growing weary,
he set off to Berlin to prosecute his claims to a Swedish ship which
he had seized, but of which the authorities at Cagliari would not
permit him to dispose. Four and a half years after the capture, she was
adjudged his good prize; but before he could enter into possession of
her she was sunk at her moorings by a violent storm.
The total gain of the Prussian Government from the activity of these
three privateers was quite negligible; while, on the other hand,
the trouble and annoyance caused by them was immeasurable. The
anticipations that the seas would be swept of Austrian and Swedish
commerce by a swarm of vessels under the Prussian flag proved to
have been quite illusory, and it was a particular disappointment to
Frederick that the German shipowners looked askance at the whole
business, and in no single instance applied for letters of marque.
A noteworthy feature of the episode is that Frederick's Government,
reversing the practice of the Hansa, laid down for its privateers the
rule that a neutral flag covered the enemy's goods, and that neutral
goods were safe from capture even when under the enemy's flag. This, it
is maintained, has ever since been Prussian tradition.
A final word is due to the "Société de Commerce Maritime"--now under
the name "Seehandlung," the State bank of the Kingdom of Prussia--which
was established by Frederick the Great in 1772, "to carry on shipping
under the Prussian flag, and trade with the ports of Spain and all
other places where reasonable and certain prospects of substantial
profits from imports and exports are to be found." It was vessels of
this corporation which, towards the close of the first half of the
nineteenth century, bore a German flag for the first time round the
world, and its foundation shows that the Great Elector's ideas were
only dormant and not dead.
Frederick's immediate purpose was to open up the markets of South
America to Silesian linen, but, in consequence of the rigid
protectionist policy of Spain, it was only possible to do this by
transhipment at Spanish ports. The original capital of the company was
1,200,000 thalers, in shares of 500 thalers each, and of these 2,100
were the property of the King. The Société was granted the exclusive
right of trading in English, French, and Spanish salt, and in Polish
wax, and was also endowed with many other privileges. It did not at
first prove a very profitable venture, and its early days were also
clouded over by the defalcations of one of its managers. In course of
time it became little more than a branch of the Royal Treasury and
the negotiator of State loans, but in the thirties of last century
it passed under the control of a man who determined to restore to
it something of its original character, and laid out a considerable
capital in English-built ships. At that period German merchantmen
seldom ventured beyond Bordeaux and Lisbon; but the vessels of the
Seehandlung repeatedly encircled the globe, showed their flag in the
remotest harbours of Orient and Occident, and established directly
that export to South America of the wares of the Riesengebirge which
Frederick the Great had in his mind when he called the company into
existence.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: Thaler then = about 4s. 6d.]