Free Heligoland by George Drower

to overcome the resistance to his pet project, the Kiel Canal, in the imperial councils. 13 But by the 1880s Bismarck was well established as the ‘Iron Chancellor’ and he had Kaiser Wilhelm I’s support.
    In February 1886 the Reichstag was considering a bill on the subject of the Kiel Canal, which it was widely expected to approve. The 61-mile shipping waterway was to be constructed between the Elbe above Brunsbüttel and the Baltic Sea at Holtenau above Kiel, thus linking the North Sea and the Baltic. As well as gratifying the political wishes of the ‘extenders of the realm’, who envisaged it as a tangible demonstration of Prussian imperial power, it would also reduce dramatically the sailing distance between Kiel and Wilhelmshaven from 480 miles to just 80. An entire fleet of ironclads could be quickly and safely moved across German territory from one sea to the other, and would no longer have to sail through the Skagerrak and Kattegat on the ‘Great Belt’ route along the Danish coast, where they were at risk of attack from other vessels and mines. Actual construction of the canal would begin in 1887, but in the meantime, to remove the potential risk of a British blockade of the Elbe estuary (and thereby the western end of the canal), Bismarck became convinced that Germany must somehow get control of Heligoland.
    On 5 May 1884 he had written to Count Münster, the German ambassador in London, instructing him to invite Gladstone’s government to consider abandoning the island. Münster, who had long advocated Anglo-German cooperation, was delighted with this instruction and replied on 8 May: ‘During my appointment here I have always, although the possession of Heligoland lay near my heart, carefully avoided discussing the question with the statesmen here.’ The only time the ambassador had had any discussion on the subject with any English statesman was in a conversation with the present Colonial Secretary, Lord Derby, who himself brought up the question. Münster was shooting with Derby at Knowsley when the minister happened to receive some official letters, including one from Colonel O’Brien, the Governor of Heligoland. Lord Derby remarked: ‘This perfectly useless piece of rock in the North Sea, the smallest of our colonies, gives me the most trouble of any.’ To which Münster replied: ‘If the rock seems so useless to you, you should make it useful by building a harbour or else hand it over to the Germans.’ Derby quipped: ‘If Germany would undertake to build a harbour of refuge, which would cost at least £250,000, there might be some use in talking about it.’ Münster pretended to attach little importance to the matter, but now assumed his new instruction from Bismarck gave him an easy opening for a more serious discussion at a convenient opportunity. 14 He decided the most effective tactic would be to play upon Britain’s evident disinclination to spend money on fortifications.
    On 17 May 1884 the veteran Foreign Secretary Lord Granville met Münster at the Foreign Office for a routine, if formal, discussion on various matters of mutual concern. Towards the close of the conversation, the German ambassador said he wished to have a further talk with Granville, on a subject that he said might startle the Foreign Secretary. From a memorandum left much later by Lord Granville, we learn that Münster said:
    Heligoland was a place of no importance to Britain in its present state, whereas it would be of immense importance to Germany, to Britain, and to the whole of the world, if it were made into a good harbour of refuge. This would be an expensive work for Britain to undertake. Britain could not be expected to go to such an expense, whereas Germany would be quite ready to undertake it. Count Bismarck wished to cut a canal into the Baltic, which would also be a great advantage to Britain, as the most powerful maritime nation in the world, and Heligoland, which of course would always be open to