By the following summer the Prussian fleet could already boast two steamers, one sailing corvette, and twenty-one gun sloops, with a total complement of thirty-seven officers and 1,521 men, and mounting in all sixty-seven guns. But only once did this primitive navy have the satisfaction of taking part in a pitched naval engagement. This was a duel between a Prussian steamer and a Danish brig, which fought for five hours off the island of Rügen. The encounter was terminated by the fall of darkness, and before day broke again another Danish corvette arrived on the scene and put the Prussians to flight. But, in spite of a lack of fighting, the presence of Commodore Schröder's force along the coast undoubtedly did much to relieve the pressure of the blockade. The peace with Denmark in 1850 ushered in a period of assiduous and systematic labour at the task of building up a Prussian fleet. Throughout this important period, the moving spirit was the man who has already been described as the father of the German Navy, Prince Adalbert of Prussia. This enthusiastic and indefatigable sailor was a first cousin of King Frederick William IV., who refused the imperial crown as a democratic gift, and of the Emperor William I., who finally won it on the battlefields of France. In his boyhood, Prince Adalbert had had the doctrine of the vital importance of sea-power implanted in his mind by a veteran soldier, Field-Marshal Gneisenau, and he never forgot the lesson. At the age of twenty-one he paid a visit of two months' duration to England, where he was cordially welcomed into naval circles, and where his passion for the sea was inflamed by the conversation of men who had fought under Nelson at Trafalgar. He lost no opportunity of inspecting war vessels, shipyards, and docks, and returned to Germany with note-books crammed with information as to all he had seen and heard. A British admiral is said to have declared that the Prince knew more about the warships of Great Britain than many of their own officers, and one of the last acts of this sailor Hohenzollern was to pay a visit to the English dockyards to familiarize himself with the latest novelties in naval construction.