The preceding table gives the strength of the German Navy on April 1, 1888, completed and building, not including torpedo-boats. The following is a tabulated list of the 29 ironclads, including the Prinzessin Wilhelm and the Irene. *Speed from 12 to 14 knots. † Speed 9 knots, except Arminius, 11. Speed of Bremse and Brummer 14.6 knots, of other two, 18 knots. The statistics are not quite complete in some cases. Nearly all the ships are armed with torpedo gear. There are about 122 torpedo-boats, first and second class, and the numbers are being continually increased. The following ships are in construction January 1889 2 frigate cruisers of 4,800 tons and 8,000 horse-power, Prinzessin Wilhelm and Irene (both launched 1887, but not yet complete); 3 corvettes, the Eber, Schwalbe, and 'B'; a transport, the Ersatz Eider; 2 despatch boats, Wacht (launched 1887) and Ersatz Pommerania, besides torpedo boats, &c. Excepting the König Wilhelm, the two most powerful ships of the navy are the ironclads Kaiser and Deutschland, launched at Poplar in 1874. They are sister-ships, 280 feet long, constructed after the designs of Sir Edward J. Reed. Each is protected with an armour belt extending all fore and aft, from 5 feet 6 inches below the waterline to the main deck, and has an armour-plated battery, fitted with eight 18-ton steel breech-loading Krupp guns, arranged to fire broadside. In addition to these eight guns, there are seven other guns of 4 tons weight placed on the upper deck. The thickness of armourplates on the vital parts of the belt and battery is 10 inches; elsewhere it is 8 inches. The upper and main deck beams of each ironclad are completely covered with light steel plating, and the fore part of the lower deck is covered with plating 2 inches and 1 inch thick. The turret-ships, Friedrich der Grosse and Preussen, were built at German dockyards, after the same model, during the years 1873 and 1874. Each of them has two turrets, with armour of the thickness of 9 and 10 inches round them, 9 inches on the side at the water-line, and 7 inches fore and aft, while the armament consists of four 22-ton guns in the turrets, and two 5-ton guns placed fore and aft. The König Wilhelm, built at the Thames Ironworks, Blackwall, and launched on the 25th of April, 1868, was designed by Sir E. J. Reed, formerly Constructor of the British Navy, and carries 29 guns made of Krupp's hammered steel. The armour is 12 inches thick amidships at the water-line, tapering gradually downwards to a thickness of 7 inches at 7 feet below the water-line. Behind the bowsprit, and midway between the main and the mizen masts, are two bulkheads each of 6-inch armour and 18 inches of teak; the forward one continues from the lower deck up through the main deck, and rises to the height of 7 feet above the spar deck, where it is curved into the form of a semicircular shield, pierced with portholes for cannon and loopholes for musketry. Within this shield are two 10-ton guns, which can be used to fire straight fore and aft, or as broadside guns. The Friedrich Karl was built at La Seyne, near Toulon, after the model of the French frigate the Couronne. The Kronprinz, built at Poplar, by Messrs. Samuda Brothers, and launched in 1867, is constructed with armour-plating 5 inches thick on the belt at the water-line, and below so arranged as to protect the rudder and steering apparatus. The armament consists of 16 steel breech-loading guns of 9 tons, besides four small guns. The Irene and Prinzessin Wilhelm, built at Stettin, have their steel deck armour 2 inches thick in the centre and 3 inches in the slope. Among the other vessels of the German navy, the most remarkable are the four vessels, the Zieten, the Hohenzollern (Imperial yacht), the Pfeil, and the Blitz. They are unarmoured sea-going ships for offensive warfare, constructed for great speed, calculated to be not less than 16 knots per hour. The Greif and the Wacht, of the same class, but double the horse-power, and each 2,000 tons, are expected to have a speed of 19 knots. The German navy was commanded, according to the budget of 1888-89, by 7 admirals, who had under them 823 officers of all kinds, including engineers and surgeons, and 14,743 non-commissioned officers, men and boys, marines and sailors. The sailors of the fleet and marines are raised by conscription from among the seafaring population, which is exempt on this account from service in the army. Great inducements are held out for able seamen to volunteer in the navy, and the number of these in recent years has been very large. The total seafaring population of Germany is estimated at 80,000, of whom 48,000 are serving in the merchant navy at home, and about 6,000 in foreign navies. Germany has two ports of war, at Kiel, on the Baltic, and Wilhelmshaven in the Bay of Jade, on the North Sea. The port of Wilhelmshaven is a vast artificial construction of granite, and comprises five separate harbours, with canals, sluices to regulate the tide, and an array of dry docks for ordinary and ironclad vessels. Area and Population. The table on next page gives the area and population of the twenty-five Stites of Germany in the order of their magnitude, and of the Reichsland of Alsace-Lorraine, as returned at the census enumerations, taken December 1, 1875, December 1, 1880, and December 1, 1885. At the census of December 1, 1885, the number of males was 22,933,664, and the number of females 23,922,040, being an excess of 988,376 females over males in the total population of the Empire. The number of inhabited houses in 1885 was 5,378,077, and of households 9,999,558. The average density of the population (1885) was 221 per square mile; excluding Hamburg it was greatest in Saxony, where it reached nearly 550 per square mile, and least in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, where it was 87 per square mile. Of the total population (in 1880) 41.4 per cent. live in towns of 2,000 inhabitants and above, and 58.6 in rural communes; in 1875 the former was 39 and the latter 61 per cent. Of every 100 inhabitants there lived in— The population of Germany was 23,103,211 in 1816, and in 1837, 30,010,711, representing an average annual increase of nearly 1.5 per cent. In 1858 it was 35,334,538, an average annual increase of 0.75 per cent. since 1837; in 1867, it was 38,495,926 souls, an average annual increase of 0 625 per cent. From the census of 1867 to that of 1871, the war intervening, the increase was only at the rate of 0.58 per annum; but from 1871 to 1875 it rose to 1:01 per cent. per annum; from 1875 to 1880 to 1.14 per cent., and from 1880 to 1885 it was 0.71 per cent. The increase of population during the last census period was greatest in Hamburg, Reuss Schleiz and Greiz, Brunswick, Anhalt, Lübeck, and Bremen. In the two Mecklenburgs and in AlsaceLorraine there was a decrease. According to the occupation-census of June 5, 1882, the population of Germany was divided as on the table below. Of the total, 18,986,494 are actually engaged in the various occupations. The bulk of the German population is (on the basis of language) Teutonic, but in the Prussian provinces of Posen, Silesia, West and East Prussia, are 2,454,000 Slavs (Poles); who, with 280,000 Walloons and French, 150,000 Lithuanians, 140,000 Danes, and about the same number of Wends, Moravians, and Bohemians, make up 3,205,000 non-Germanic inhabitants, 7 per cent. of the total population. Prussia Bavaria Saxony. Württemberg Baden 752,489 13,086 674,080 143,258 11.254 11,678,383 226,024 9,393,750 2,725,344 690,892 1,305,657 1,267,810 27,287,860 64,250 1,558,598 54,730 35,332 929,757 Meckl.-Schwerin 293,348 10,723 137,189 47,783 20,808 32,135 33,007 574,993 Total Empire. 18,840,818 384,637 16,058,080 4,531,080 938.294 2,222,982 2,246,222 45,222,113 The following table gives the total number of births, deaths, and marriages, with the surplus of births over deaths, in the whole German Empire, during each of the five years from 1882 to 1886 : |