How to Serve in the Navy
In Germany, a young royal woman’s entrée into society came once she reached marriageable age—seventeen to twenty—through a formal court presentation and the ball that followed.
The debutante began by calling upon the court and offering the monarch and his consort a perfect court curtsy. Once that rite was complete, she might attend the grand court ball, take partners for the dance, and begin, in earnest, the search for a future husband.
Young royal men debuted by a somewhat different path. Usually, in their late teens—sixteen to eighteen—they received Confirmation in their faith (the Hohenzollerns were Lutheran). That ceremony marked the starting point of recognition as adults in rank and station. After Confirmation came commission into the army. That, too, was fixed tradition, and there was no escaping it.
Upon commissioning, a man received a military parade, the right to attend the sovereign, and the kingdom’s highest decoration—the Order of the Black Eagle. Thereafter he gained the right to appear in uniform at the officers’ ball, and that ball was the true heart and crown of a gentleman’s social debut. Last of all, he presented himself at court to the monarch, declared that he had come of age, and received the rights and duties of an adult nobleman.
In short: if a social debut was regarded as a woman’s ticket of entry into the marriage market, for a man it was the foundation stone of standing as an independent noble in society.
So it was little wonder that everyone was shocked when Waldemar postponed his own social debut for the sake of his fiancée. In their eyes, a prince who would surrender every chance to mix on equal terms with other nobles as an adult gentleman—and all for a betrothed—was an eccentric among eccentrics.
Yet even if Waldemar claimed he had given up his debut for his fiancée, he could not ignore the traditions of the royal house altogether. Whether he later chose to debut at an officers’ ball or not was his own affair; joining the military was not. That was a Prussian royal tradition every prince was bound to keep.
Waldemar held a quiet coming-of-age ceremony with only the royal family and close relations present. Alix, who attended, could not hide her smile at the sight of the prince simplifying the rites out of consideration for her. That man of such dignity was her betrothed. Now that Waldemar was of age, she had only to wait for herself to grow. The time stretched before her like an endless road.
When the ceremony was done, Waldemar took his leave of Alix. By then he scarcely minded other people’s eyes when they met.
“I’ll be with the service for a while. I’ll write often.”
“Yes. I’ll write even more often.”
Waldemar was not particularly surprised by an answer so thoroughly like her.
He chose the navy for his post.
“The navy? Not a bad choice.”
Heinrich, already serving with the fleet, welcomed his younger brother’s decision. Of course Waldemar had reasons of his own.
First, the navy was freer and more open in atmosphere than the army—hardly surprising, given how few conservative Junkers it held. Raised under the influence of a previous life and an English liberal education, Waldemar judged the navy the branch of the German forces that best matched his own temperament.
Second, the army required living in barracks as a rule, whereas the navy, while a fleet was in port, allowed not only living ashore but the freedom of society in the city. For a man who was also a businessman, which arrangement was the more advantageous needed no explanation.
Third, in the matter of meals the conservative army leaned heavily toward traditional fare—sausage, pork, bread, black bread, and other monotony. The navy, by contrast, was famous for serving fresh vegetables, fruit, and tinned goods against scurvy, and for putting a varied table for diplomatic and ceremonial purposes besides. Even those meals were issued according to a modern system of nutrition. Looked at that way, the navy was the healthier choice for its own sake.
Fourth, the navy was filled chiefly with men of the rising commercial nobility, capitalists, and technical officialdom. In certain respects their political and economic interests ran with Waldemar’s own, and over the long run they were people worth knowing. The Junkers of the army were worth knowing as friends too, of course, but they could never become allies one trusted to the bone. Waldemar meant to find those allies in the navy.
Fifth, Waldemar, sheltered under his English mother’s formidable skirts, had never received the basic military schooling ordinary royal boys were given. Even if he had wanted the army, he lacked the elementary grounding that would have made service possible.
Weighing all these reasons, Waldemar declared his intention to apply for the navy.
His pen-friend Moltke nearly leapt out of his chair when he heard it.
“Your Highness, the army is the estate of honorable nobility. You must consider that a navy packed with rootless fellows will be of no help whatever to Your Highness’s future society.”
“I should have liked it so myself, Major, but as you know, I have no basic military experience at all. In the army I should only have been a burden.”
Moltke remonstrated several times more, but he could not change Waldemar’s mind.
“Still, if you should change your thinking, tell me. I can manage that much for you.”
“Your saying so is already a comfort.”
The navy received Waldemar’s application with open delight.
“First Prince Heinrich, and now Prince Waldemar—with princes keeping on entering the service, the next generation will put its weight behind the navy. Since a volunteer has come from the royal house, do take some care over the prince’s posting.”
Waldemar was entered into the Imperial Navy cadet program as Heinrich had been in his youth. The service officials, as before, proposed a tailored career for a prince.
“You have come at an excellent moment. The navy is contemplating a voyage around the world just now; if Your Highness took part, it would be the perfect way to gain experience.”
I’m grateful they think of my career, but must I pile up sea time? Couldn’t I simply go as an administrative officer?
Waldemar had little desire to go to sea. After some thought he put a proposal of his own to the navy.
“I should like to work for the navy on land. Everyone wants to serve aboard a warship, but in truth those men cannot do their full part without faithful support from the rear, can they? If only you will give me the chance, I will do my utmost in such work as raising funds for the navy.”
The proposal left them all nonplussed. Any gentleman of standing longed to serve on a surface ship and looked forward to meeting foreign nobles and enjoying balls and parties abroad. And here was a prince kicking that aside to take work fit for the sons of undignified capitalists and bureaucrats?
The naval officers sat in confusion—until they suddenly recalled Waldemar’s reputation.
“Ah. His Highness means to leave no room for misunderstanding, out of thought for his fiancée.”
“If it is Prince Waldemar, that would be it.”
To avoid social life itself so as not to trouble his betrothed—what devoted, pure love that was. Those who had meant to rebuke him for shunning surface ships all fell silent.
“What shall we do?”
Opinion among them ran in complicated directions until the man with the greatest authority over cadet training, Naval Inspector of Education Maximilian von der Goltz, gave the decision.
“For the time being, let the prince have his way.”
“Sir? Then how do we explain it to the court?”
Report that they had indulged a prince’s refusal of surface service? A thunderbolt would fall at once.
“The prince promised, did he not? That he would try his hand at such work as raising funds. If he produces no results, we simply send him back.”
“Ah.”
That was a masterstroke—grant the prince’s request and still meet the expectations of the royal house. Here was how one caught both rabbits at once.
Thanks to the inspector’s orders, Waldemar was able to shift his path at once from surface officer to administrative officer serving ashore.
“Your Highness—will you truly give up surface service?”
The classmates who had spent a few days with him hoped he would reverse the decision. Waldemar had no intention of abandoning shore duty.
“You fellows at sea, I on land—we shall still be working for the Empire and the navy alike. We’ll go on serving in the same navy. Don’t talk as if we were parting for good.”
For the classmates who felt the mixture of relief and regret, Waldemar bought a round of light beer. Then he settled on service at Wilhelmshaven, one of the German navy’s principal bases.
There he showed his resourcefulness and told the navy he would hire, at his own expense, a cold-storage warehouse in the city and use it as his office.
“Very well.”
Certain, in any case, that the prince would achieve nothing of consequence by administration, the navy cheerfully allowed him to set up an office. The moment it was ready, Waldemar, through John Connor, hired in bulk the street painters and women office assistants he needed and brought them in.
“Could these people be carried, for form’s sake, as belonging to the navy? I will pay their wages myself.”
“If Your Highness will take responsibility, then yes. But those personnel may not transfer their place of duty anywhere outside that office.”
Waldemar agreed. From that day he began work in earnest.
“From today, we start making money.”
The business model he had in mind was the sale of Naval Stamps—something the German navy would one day make famous itself. Like the Kaiser after him, Waldemar meant to design stamps of naval battleships, promote them, sell them, and, if the thing grew, make toys as well. Of course his money-making was not aimed at supporting shipbuilding. As he had done in the original history, he thought it enough to earn only what would go into maritime welfare and aid for bereaved families.
I have no wish to touch the shipbuilding side in the first place.
There was nothing in it that would profit his own enterprises. He put speed into the stamp work. Once he had a prototype, mass production could be settled simply by borrowing Schneider’s presses.
“This looks a little flat. Change the colors so that one feels power just by looking at them.”
Waldemar put considerable effort into the stamps. Whether he would be allowed to remain on land hung on this. To solve the problem he even cut down the letters he sent to Alix.
“It’s all right. Even without Your Highness’s letters I know your affection.”
Alix, sensing how important the matter was to the prince, agreed to his writing less often. After two weeks of furious work, Waldemar had produced a pile of stamps.
“Well then. Time to put them to the test.”
With his results in hand, Waldemar set out to find his superiors.