Editing Prussian Navy (section)

==The 19th century==
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild134-B0335, Fregatte "Thetis" vor Anker.jpg|thumb|right|300px|[[SMS Thetis (1855)|HMS ''Thetis'']], {{circa|1867}}]] 
After the end of the [[Napoleonic Wars]], Prussia slowly began to build its own small fleet for coastal defense. Again, more value was placed on the development of a [[merchant navy]] than on an actual navy. In this connection, the Prussian Maritime Enterprise played a significant role. Its ships were armed to protect against [[pirate]]s and flew the Prussian war [[Ensign (flag)|ensign]]. This protective fleet existed until around 1850.

One of the first to work for the development of a Prussian Navy was Prince [[Adalbert of Prussia]]. He had made a number of journeys abroad and recognized the value of a fleet to support commercial interests and to protect one's own navigation.  During the [[Revolutions of 1848|Revolutionary era of 1848–1852]], at the behest of the [[Frankfurt National Assembly]], the prince was given the responsibility of reestablishing an Imperial Fleet (''[[Reichsflotte]]'') -- a mission which the revolutionary parliament had undertaken in the face of the war with Denmark.

The [[German Confederation]] possessed practically no fleet of its own, but relied upon the allied powers of Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark. During the [[First Schleswig War|First War of Schleswig]] of 1848–1851, the failure of this strategy became clear because Great Britain and the Netherlands remained neutral and Denmark became the enemy. Within a few days, the [[Royal Danish Navy|Danish Navy]] halted all German maritime trade in the North and Baltic Seas. The navy of [[Austria]], Prussia's ally, lay in the [[Mediterranean]] and was able to intervene only later in the war.

After the failure of the Revolutions of 1848, Adalbert was able to resume his plans for the establishment of a Prussian Navy. He began with the construction of warships and naval education and training. From the middle of the 1850s, one could find Prussian [[corvette]]s and [[frigate]]s upon all the world's seas.

Besides Prince Adalbert, other important figures of this early period were Prussian naval officers [[Karl Rudolf Brommy]] and [[Ludwig von Henk]], who eventually became an admiral in the Imperial German Navy.

[[File:Preußische Marineinfanterie 1862.jpg|thumb|Preußische Marineinfanterie 1862.]]

For centuries, Brandenburg and Prussia had only access to the [[Baltic Sea]] coast. Since the 1850s, the first naval base was established on the [[North Sea]]. In the [[Jade Treaty]] (''Jade-Vertrag'') of 1853, the [[Grand Duchy of Oldenburg]] ceded to Prussia the so-called Jade District. Here, in the following years, arose the great naval port which received the name [[Wilhelmshaven]] after lengthy construction work, in 1869. By that time, a separate Prussian Navy had already ceased to exist as it evolved into the [[North German Federal Navy]].

In the 1864 [[Second Schleswig War]], Prussian seamen, with some help from Austria, fought numerically superior [[Danish Navy]] again in [[Battle of Jasmund (1864)|Jasmund]] and [[Battle of Heligoland (1864)|Heligoland]], but without much naval success - unlike the Prussian army that gained control over Schleswig-Holstein and its ports. 

After the [[Austro-Prussian War]] of 1866, the North German states had allied under Prussian leadership as the [[North German Confederation]]. Out of the Prussian Navy grew the [[North German Federal Navy]], which after the [[Franco-Prussian War]] changed its name again to become the [[Imperial German Navy|Imperial Navy]] of the new German Empire.