after the island’s surrender in 1807, the British discovered a lighthouse on the highest point of the plateau. It took the form of a red-brick tower upon which was kept alight a coal fire. Surprisingly, captured papers revealed that its maintenance (and that of a similar lighthouse on Neuwerk Isle at the mouth of the Elbe) was financed by the Admiralty of Hamburg, which for countless years had been paying for 700 tons of high-quality coal to be procured for it each year from Scotland. 8 At Colonel Hamilton’s recommendation the tower was replaced by a more effective, state-of-the-art rounded lighthouse, similar in type to those then being built around the coast of Ireland. However, because of Joseph Hume’s repeated criticisms in Parliament about the amount of money spent on the island, since 1825 the authorities in Hamburg had again been permitted to pay for the light’s running costs, although it remained the property of Trinity House.
There was further blurring of the island’s national identity. Again to save money, the Colonial Office had allowed Heligoland’s postal affairs to be run by the City of Hamburg. With the British government paying the maintenance expenses, the postal authorities of Prussia undertook to design, engrave and print all the necessary labels and stationery at their own Royal Printing Office (ironically, it was they who printed Queen Victoria’s head on the stamps). That rather Byzantine modus operandi led to some astonishing scams. By 1870 a series of special stamps, which had first been issued in 1867, were being widely forged, notably by a gang of criminals known as the Spiro Brothers. Their plates somehow fell into the hands of a printer in Hamburg. Then a Herr Goldner, a dealer in that city, was allowed to purchase the plates of ten stamps of different value from the Royal Printing Office in Berlin. All the stamps were defunct, but immediately he obtained possession of them he set about producing reprints, charging double the ordinary price for supplying them postmarked. This arrangement caused ill-feeling between Government House on the island and the Hamburg Post Office, while much-needed revenue was being forfeited by the farming-out of the production of those symbols of nationhood.
In 1848 the Germans were rethinking their naval strategy; although it was not evident at the time, this would have a profound influence on the future of Heligoland. In that year a former German diplomat, who had recently embarked on a career in politics but was still virtually unknown, wondered if the effectiveness of the German Navy could be increased by widening the barge canal that wound across the Jutland peninsula separating the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. His name was Otto von Bismarck. Far-sightedly he set about quietly acquiring the land rights which could eventually serve as the territorial basis for the construction of the Kiel Canal. ‘I travelled back to Berlin with the cession of an old strip of land on the Jade in my pocket, thinking not a little of my achievement’, he later admitted. 9 But for many years subsequently, Bismarck was entirely distracted from his canal scheme by more pressing affairs of state.
In the meantime, however, the planners of Germany’s fledgling coastal navy were increasingly having strategic nightmares about the Royal Navy’s devastating raid against the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1807. The central question buzzing in their minds was how they could best forestall the British from making such a ruinously effective pre-emptive attack against their own warships. Ironically, their sense of strategic vulnerability was increased by the inauguration in 1869 of a new naval base called Wilhelmshaven. It was Germany’s equivalent to Chatham, but its location a few miles inland in the muddy Jade estuary made it potentially vulnerable to a blockade by the British, who could use Heligoland as a forward base, just 48 miles north across the Bight. With that strategic
There was further blurring of the island’s national identity. Again to save money, the Colonial Office had allowed Heligoland’s postal affairs to be run by the City of Hamburg. With the British government paying the maintenance expenses, the postal authorities of Prussia undertook to design, engrave and print all the necessary labels and stationery at their own Royal Printing Office (ironically, it was they who printed Queen Victoria’s head on the stamps). That rather Byzantine modus operandi led to some astonishing scams. By 1870 a series of special stamps, which had first been issued in 1867, were being widely forged, notably by a gang of criminals known as the Spiro Brothers. Their plates somehow fell into the hands of a printer in Hamburg. Then a Herr Goldner, a dealer in that city, was allowed to purchase the plates of ten stamps of different value from the Royal Printing Office in Berlin. All the stamps were defunct, but immediately he obtained possession of them he set about producing reprints, charging double the ordinary price for supplying them postmarked. This arrangement caused ill-feeling between Government House on the island and the Hamburg Post Office, while much-needed revenue was being forfeited by the farming-out of the production of those symbols of nationhood.
In 1848 the Germans were rethinking their naval strategy; although it was not evident at the time, this would have a profound influence on the future of Heligoland. In that year a former German diplomat, who had recently embarked on a career in politics but was still virtually unknown, wondered if the effectiveness of the German Navy could be increased by widening the barge canal that wound across the Jutland peninsula separating the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. His name was Otto von Bismarck. Far-sightedly he set about quietly acquiring the land rights which could eventually serve as the territorial basis for the construction of the Kiel Canal. ‘I travelled back to Berlin with the cession of an old strip of land on the Jade in my pocket, thinking not a little of my achievement’, he later admitted. 9 But for many years subsequently, Bismarck was entirely distracted from his canal scheme by more pressing affairs of state.
In the meantime, however, the planners of Germany’s fledgling coastal navy were increasingly having strategic nightmares about the Royal Navy’s devastating raid against the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1807. The central question buzzing in their minds was how they could best forestall the British from making such a ruinously effective pre-emptive attack against their own warships. Ironically, their sense of strategic vulnerability was increased by the inauguration in 1869 of a new naval base called Wilhelmshaven. It was Germany’s equivalent to Chatham, but its location a few miles inland in the muddy Jade estuary made it potentially vulnerable to a blockade by the British, who could use Heligoland as a forward base, just 48 miles north across the Bight. With that strategic
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