Concurrently with the abortive efforts to found a German Navy, Prussia had taken independent action, and laid the real foundation of the great fleet which now aspires to contest the British mastery of the seas. At that time there was not even the slenderest basis for the kingdom to work upon. The task had to be undertaken from the very beginning. During the first half of the nineteenth century, it is true, the advisability of building a navy had more than once been exhaustively discussed by the Prussian Government. In the general resettlement of 1815, the island of Rügen and the strip of Pomeranian coast opposite to it had passed from Sweden to Prussia, and included in the transfer were six gun-sloops and a Swedish officer, Captain Christian Lange, who was summoned to Berlin to report to the War Ministry on the utility of the little flotilla. As the result of his representations, he was commissioned to submit plans and estimates for a war schooner, and for an armed rowing boat for use on the rivers. These vessels were eventually built, with the express idea that they were to serve as experiments and models for the construction of a regular fleet. In great haste prescriptions as to a naval uniform were issued, and the questions of dockyards and harbour works were also deliberated. But the only issue of all this work was the conviction that the national resources were not yet equal to the financial strain which would have been entailed by the creation of a navy. Similar investigations and discussions in the years 1825 and 1832 were, for the same reason, equally fruitless. At the commencement of the revolutionary year, the only vessels in the possession of the Prussian Government were a corvette, which was employed as a Navigation School, a paddle steamer, which conveyed the mails between Stettin and St. Petersburg, and which, under the terms of the contract for its construction, was to be adaptable to the purposes of an "auxiliary cruiser," and a couple of armed yawls. By the autumn of 1848 a Prussian flotilla of ten sloops and yawls, three of which had been built with the funds collected by private committees, was ready for operations against the Danes. It was placed under the command of a Dutch ex-naval captain named Schröder. The crews provided for him--465 men in all--were a strange medley of active soldiers, reservists, and seamen from the merchant service. For various reasons, not the least weighty of which was the doubtful status of the black-red-and-gold flag, the squadron sailed under the Prussian colours. While it was fitting out, the first steps were taken towards the establishment of a naval organization and the training of a corps of officers.