54 MY MEMOIRS

been constructed in England. But when I was working out the first manoeuvres at his orders in 1882, things went so well with our experimental boats, which were bad in those days, that Stosch began to take an interest in torpedo boats. Then Caprivi, who recognized in the torpedo boat a means which corresponded to his strategic ideas, commissioned me to develop the torpedo-boat section. There was a great variety of opinions on the subject Some wanted small coastal boats. I demanded sea-going vessels which could fight in the North Sea, and the struggle between the advocates of sea-going ships and those who supported the coast-defence scheme continued through all my activities down to the building of the submarines.

Even before the pattern boats, which had been ordered from various German and English firms, were completed, Caprivi asked me to devise suitable tactics with the older boats in the summer of 1884. Thus, the growth of tactics preceded the development of the more cumbrous technical side, just as it did later in the case of tactical work with the big ships in the nineties.1

In the meantime the boats which we had ordered arrived, the Admiralty having wrongly left to the discretion of the different firms a number of important considerations, such as sea-worthiness, cheapness, size,

1 Cf. Chap. VI. For the rest, I never shared this infatuation for torpedo boats, and pointed out to Caprivi that this auxiliary arm, which (like the submarine later) was bound by its very nature to become obsolete, could never be a substitute for a tjattle fleet which was our real need.