EXPLOSION AT WILHEMSHAVEN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 113, 14 May 1910, Page 5

EXPLOSION AT WILHEMSHAVEN.

FIVE SAILOES SILLED. SEVERAL OTHERS INJURED. By Telegraph.— Presa Association.— Copyright, BERLIN, 13th May. While mine-laying experiments were being conducted at Wilhelmshaven (now the German Fleet's headquarters on the .North Sea), an explosion killed five bluejackets and severely injured another. The disaster occurred during the manoeuvres of a mine-finding squadron. Besides building ships and training over 50,000 (sailors to man them, Germany has spent and is spending huge sums on her North Sea naval bases, and in particular on Wilhelmshaven, the new headquarters of the fleet,\ in place of Kiel, on the Baltic. Kiel and Wilhelmshaven are connected by the Kaiser Wilhelm canal, which was opened in 1895, and cost £7,800,000. Docks capable of accommodating the largest ships afloat have been under construction at Wilhelmshaven, and large sums are being spent in deepening the harbour. Emden, at the mouth of the Ems, about 60 miles west of Wilhelmshaven, is to be the Headquarters of the torpedo flotillas. As a recent writer on the subject observed, "It is sound policy to make Em den the primary torpedo base, for it is the nearest of all German ports to the English coast, and the first requisite for successful torpedo operations is that the attack should be made from a point as close as possible to the objective." On the other side of Wilhelmshaven, and on the left bank of the estuary of the Elbe, stands Germany's third North Sea base, Cuxhaven. It is one of the most strongly fortified ports on the whole German coast, and is the headquarters of the mining division of tho fleet. Germany attaches great importance to this branch of naval warfare, and at the Hague Conference persistently opposed all limitations upon the use of mines. Cuxhaven is to Hamburg much what Sheerness is to London. Nearly all this elaboration of bases and of docks on the North Sea has been carried out in quite recertt years. Geographically Germany had terrible difficulties to overcome before she could make her North Sea bases in anyway suitable as headquarters for a great modern fleet, bvtt she has succeeded in doing so by the same steady perseverance as she shows in the regular augmentation of her fleet year by year.

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