The Spithead Naval Review 1897

In June 1897 the British Royal Navy was at the peak of its relative power. The celebrations of the Queen's 60th Jubilee were an opportunity to demonstrate this naval mastery to the world. One hundred and sixty five warships were drawn up in six lines each over two miles long at Spithead off Portsmouth. In the afternoon, they were ceremoniously reviewed by the Prince of Wales in the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert, followed by spectacular illuminations that evening. Even without the powerful Mediterranean fleet or other overseas stations, this fleet was bigger and more modern than the combined front line forces of the next largest navies, the French and Russian.

To witness this display of power, all the Great Powers were invited to send a suitable warship to represent their country and celebrate the reign of the Queen Empress. Fourteen foreign warships made up Line A, the furthest from the shore and paralleled at a distance of 500 yards by Line B consisting of the newest and most powerful battleships and first class protected cruisers of the Home Fleet. The French and Russians each sent their latest armoured cruisers. But by 1897 every informed observer knew that both countries were resigned to being runners up in the naval competitions of the era.

On the other hand, the German and Japanese attendees were harbingers of serious challenges in the future which, though overcome, would weaken British imperial power decisively. The American attendee was an early example of a ship of the "New Navy" that was eventually to develop into the dominant USN of 1945.

SMS König Wilhelm

The German Kaiser sent his brother Konteradmiral Prince Heinrich, a grandson of Queen Victoria, in one of the oldest ships of the Kaiserliche Marine. The König Wilhelm was a large ironclad built on the Thames in 1868 which was for many years the flagship of the German navy. At the review, the ship had recently emerged from a rebuild, losing the sailing rig and with new boilers, steel armour and an additional broadside battery of modern 8.8cm Quick Firing (QF) guns. Now classified as an armoured cruiser, König Wilhelm was too slow and antiquated to bother even a modern first class protected cruiser, let alone her host ship, the battleship HMS Royal Sovereign, berthed opposite.

But times were changing. Just 11 days before, Konteradmiral Alfred Tirpitz, the incoming State Secretary for the Navy, had presented to the Kaiser a plan to increase the German battle fleet to 19 modern battleships over 25 years. Tirpitz exploited the Kaiser's personal goal to make his navy as important and powerful as his father had made the Prussian army. The plan was approved by the German parliament in 1898, and then the numbers were doubled in 1900 aided by tension between Britain and Germany over the Boer War. Inevitably and predictably, the British responded in kind and the Anglo-German naval race was on.

During the Great War, the threat of the German High Seas Fleet was neutralised by the British Grand Fleet, but the German U-Boat war against trade was a serious threat only overcome with great effort by the Royal Navy. The High Seas Fleet collapsed when the sailors mutinied in 1918. Prince Heinrich, now a Grand Admiral, was forced to flee Kiel disguised as a revolutionary wearing a red armband and flying the Red Flag from his car. The König Wilhelm was scrapped 3 years later, having been the cadet training and barrack ship at the Mürwik Naval Academy since 1909.

富士 (Fuji)

The Fuji was built at Thames Iron Works at Blackwall, the same yard that launched the König Wilhelm some 28 years before. Both were state of the art battleships of their era. Fuji was the first Japanese battleship and a smaller, faster and improved version of the British Royal Sovereign. Anchored 14th in the A line opposite HMS Blenheim, the Fuji came direct to the review from Portland Dockyard where fitting out was being conducted prior to formal commissioning. After arriving in Japan in February 1898, Fuji fought in all the battles of the Russo-Japanese war before being damaged beyond repair by American carrier aircraft in July 1945 while employed as a barracks hulk at Yokosuka.

"Launch of the Fuji at Blackwall", 31 March 1896, by Gerald Maurice Burn, Artstor, Science Museum Group

In their infancy, both the German and Japanese navies benefitted from a close relationship with the Royal Navy and the British armaments industry. This relationship strengthened to an alliance in 1904 which endured throughout the Great War until terminated at the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 as a concession to the United States. By then, the Imperial Japanese Navy was the third most powerful behind the RN and USN. In 1942, the British naval forces in the far east were decisively defeated by the Japanese air and surface fleets. Only the Americans had the power and industrial capacity to build the carrier task forces that were to obliterate the IJN in 1944 and 1945.

USS Brooklyn

The first task of the armoured cruiser USS Brooklyn was to represent the United States of America at the Jubilee review. After commissioning the ship on 1 December 1896, Captain Francis A Cook took his command across the Atlantic as the flagship of Rear Admiral Joseph N Miller. Opposite their berth (Line A, berth 5) was HMS Empress of India, one of the Royal Sovereign class that made up the backbone of the Channel Fleet. The Brooklyn was fast and heavily gunned, though relatively lightly armoured - certainly every bit the equal of the similar cruisers being built by the French. With the USS New York, these two big cruisers were part of the steady building programme started in 1882 that revived the fortunes of the USN - the "New Navy". The Brooklyn also sported an impressive American eagle bow scroll that would give any Imperial German or British battleship a run for their money.

Brooklyn in 1898 as flagship of Commodore Schley of the "Flying Squadron" (Navsource.net). The marked tumble home, lozenge arrangement of main guns and heavy military masts show French influence.

Two berths ahead of Brooklyn was the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya, a modern armoured cruiser inspired by the British Orlando. The ship was four years older and 2,500 tons lighter than Brooklyn. We cannot know whether the officers and men of the two ships socialised, but surely they would have been eyeing up each other's vessels - a favourite pastime of professional fighting men at such reviews. In the atmosphere of social Darwinian nationalism of the 1890s, every other navy was a potential foe.

A year and a week later the two ships met again on opposite sides in the battle of Santiago de Cuba. A Spanish squadron attempted to break through the USN blockade of Santiago but were picked off one by one by five American battleships and the Brooklyn and New York of the "Flying Squadron". The Vizcaya was locked in an hour long engagement with the Brooklyn at 1,200 yards range on parallel courses. The Spanish ship's gunnery was as poor as their crew was brave - Brooklyn lost one man killed and another wounded and received only superficial damage. Finally an 8-inch shell from Brooklyn set the Vizcaya uncontrollably afire and Captain Don Antonio Eulate grounded his ship in an attempt to save the crew - it exploded shortly thereafter. All the Spanish ships were sunk, 343 Spanish sailors died and another 1,889 were was rescued from the sea and captured - the Brooklyn's two casualties were the only ones sustained by the Americans.

The United States assumes naval mastery

The Spanish-American war of 1898 was the debut of the USA as a world power. Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines became part of an empire by any other name. The sea power guaranteed by the USN was now essential to the US place in the world political system, just as the mastery of the oceans provided by the RN was essential to the British Empire.

The First World War, especially the Battle of Jutland, exploded the RN 'tradition of victory' that had held the world enthralled since Trafalgar. The economic exhaustion brought on Britain by its war with Germany allowed the Americans to claim an equal place with the British at the Washington Naval Conference of 1922.

Britain emerged from the Second World War even more exhausted than from the first and with its imperial credentials fatally undermined by its losses in the far east, especially the symbolism of the Japanese sinking of the capital ships HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse. America became the new naval hegemon not by a direct military confrontation with Britain but as an inevitable consequence of American economic power eclipsing that of an exhausted British Empire.

Resources

Wikipedia articles on SMS König Wilhelm, Fuji and USS Brooklyn and the battle of Santiago de Cuba.

References

Office of Naval Intelligence, Notes on Naval Progress, Navy Department, 1898. pp. 81-96.

S R Dunn, The Power and the Glory, Seaforth Publishing, 2021. pp. 130-141.

Picture Credits

"In Honour of our Queen': Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Review at Spithead, 26 June 1897 by Charles Edward Dixon (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich)

The German Imperial Navy armoured frigate SMS König Wilhelm, after completion of her 1895-1896 modernization by Blohm & Voss, Hamburg (Germany), but prior to the removal of the mizzenmast in 1898. (Official U.S. Navy photo NH 88623 from the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command)

"Launch of the Fuji at Blackwall", 31 March 1896, by Gerald Maurice Burn, Artstor, Science Museum Group

USS Brooklyn (Armored Cruiser No. 3) Returns to the U.S. from Cuban Waters, August 1898. Her crewmen are waving to the photographer. The original photograph was published on a stereograph card by Strohmeyer & Wyman, New York, 1898. Donation of Louis Smaus, 1985. (Official U.S. Navy photo NH100345 from the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command)