However, the Prince did not manage to persuade the Frankfort technical commission to adopt his scheme in its entirety, though the programme approved went a long way towards meeting his views. Why this programme was never carried out has already been seen. In the Memorandum just quoted from, Prince Adalbert had written: "The entire nation unanimously demands a German war fleet, for German, absolutely German, it must be, a true representative of the new-born unity of the Fatherland"; and it must have been with a heavy heart that he saw his vision melt away, and went back to Berlin to employ his gifts in a more restricted and less promising field. The difficulties which opposed themselves to the realisation of the Prince's ideas will be appreciated, when it is stated that the man who built the first warship of any size which had been launched from a German yard since the days of the Hanseatic League is still alive. Wilhelm Schwarm, now ninety-four years of age, was employed as a young man in Klawitter's shipyard at Dantzig, and at the time when the air was filled with talk of a future German Navy, the firm very shrewdly sent him over to the works of Robinson and Russell, on the Thames, to learn the art of constructing vessels of larger size than were then built on the Baltic. He brought back with him the plans for a paddle corvette, which was built under his supervision on the Klawitter slips, fitted with English engines, and, under the name of _Dantzig_, was an important addition to the Prussian fleet.