Battle of Tres Forcas
On a trip abroad by the Prussian, machine-powered corvette Danzig under the leadership of Admiral Prince Adalbert of Prussia , on August 7, 1856, there was a battle of Tres Forcas between Prussian naval units and Rifkabylen , a Berber tribe in Morocco. This was one of the first examples of German gunboat policy .
Prince Adalbert had decided to explore the Rif coast in Morocco on the way to the mouth of the Danube in the Black Sea , where a German warship was to be stationed in accordance with the Peace of Paris . Four years earlier, on December 7, 1852, the Prussian brig Flora had been shot at by pirates , killing a sailor and injuring the captain .
On August 7, 1856, Prince Adalbert had two boats manned and deployed and driven towards the coast. After the locals took them under fire, the Danzig drove up to 600 meters from the bank to provide fire protection for their own troops . The admiral then ordered a landing operation. In total, the landing corps consisted of 14 officers and 53 NCOs , sailors and marines . He decided to lead the operation himself. At noon he launched a surprise attack over a steep mountain face of almost 40 meters in the middle of the strongest enemy fire. This attack was largely successful and the locals were pushed back onto a plateau. However, they were continuously reinforced and Prince Adalbert had to fear that he and his troops would be cut off from the shore. So he decided to withdraw.
In this battle a total of seven men were killed on the Prussian side and 22 were wounded. The admiral himself was shot through through the thigh. The only 16-year-old midshipman and later Admiral Eduard von Knorr was among the wounded . After a fundraising campaign throughout the Prussian Navy, a memorial in the form of an eagle was erected in Gibraltar in 1863 for the fallen .
Regardless of the fact that the company was actually a failure from a tactical point of view, the personal courage of those involved around the highly respected "Prince Admiral" was emphasized and appreciated in the public perception, and especially within the Prussian and later the German navy .
literature
- Jörg Duppler: Prince Adalbert of Prussia. Founder of the German Navy , Herford u. a. (Mittler) 1986. ISBN 3-8132-0249-6