Tag: ship
The Spithead Naval Review 1897
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations included a naval review in the waters of Spithead on 26 June 1897 of 165 warships of the Royal Navy. The occasion was a not so subtle demonstration of the absolute supremacy of the Royal Navy at the height of its power. But the seeds of decline of British naval mastery can be traced in the careers of three ships of foreign nations invited to witness this show of dominance.
SMS Kurfurst Friedrich Wilhelm / Barbaros Hayreddin
The first battleship of the Imperial German Navy to fire its guns in anger, but in the service of the Ottoman Empire, not the Kaiser. Spent 6 years as flagship of the Imperial Navy, and then deployed to suppress the Chinese Boxer rebellion. Sold to the Ottomans and provided naval gunfire support to the Turkish defenders at Gallipoli, only to become the first and only battleship to be sunk by a British submarine.
SMS Baden (1880)
A German ironclad coast defence ship of the 1870s which served as a fleet flagship for twenty years, well into the pre-Dreadnought era.