Overseas the few German gunboats on the colonial stations were soon pinned into neutral ports by the French. One Prussian raider, Augusta, evaded the blockade and captured three prizes in the Bay of Biscay before being blockaded at the Spanish port of Vigo by two French ships. The only ship to ship action of the war took place in the Carribean, off of Havana.
The Prussian gunboar Meteor (Table 1) was in Havana harbor when the French gunboat Bouvet (Table 2) came into the same port. The commander of the Bouvet challenged the Meteor to put out to sea and fight. Bouvet sailed at 8 AM on November 8, 1870; in accordance with international law Meteor sailed exactly 24 hours later. They met on the afternoon of the 9th in international waters off of Cuba with a Spanish gunboat observing to make sure the fight did not drift back into Spanish territory.
For over two hours they circled each other at top speeds, firing continuously. The gunnery had little effect. Bouvet then rammed Meteor, knocking over her main and mizzen masts. This debris then fouled Meteor's screw. As the Bouvet maneuvered for another ram she was hit in the boiler and lost power. The battle was stopped at this point by the Spanish ship as the two gunboats had drifted into Cuban waters. The losses in this action were 10 French and 2 German sailors killed or wounded.
COMPARING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE TWO NAVIES
During the Franco-Prussian War neither navy was a clear winner or loser. Both navies did some things well and others not so well. While this was a war that was going to be decided on land and not at sea, either navy could have seriously hurt national morale and prestige by suffering a defeat at sea.
During the war the French navy accomplished one thing very well. All of the German gunboats and frigates overseas were quickly pinned into neutral ports. France throughout the course of the war was able to import supplied and arms from overseas. The re-building of the French armies after Metz and Sedan would not have been possible without control of the seas. The navy also blockaded the German coasts and bottled up the Prussian fleet.. This blockade was not the stranglehold of thirty-four years later because the Germans retained friendly relations with the bordering countries. The early invasion threat, that never did proceed very far, did hold three army corps in northwestern Germany at the start of the war. The last major contribution of the French fleet was its personnel, who when taken ashore and sent to re-enforce the army fought well.
The main problems of the French navy during the war were, like the army's, administrative. The fleet was very slow to mobilize even with the heightened tensions before the war. It took ten days before a strong squadron could be sent out to look for the Prussian fleet. The other problem was that the fleet had been built to do one thing - fight a fleet action in the English Channel with the Royal Navy. The French capital ships were of very deep draft, which made it difficult to operate in coastal waters. The ships also had a very limited amount of supplies. They mostly had about ten days of coal on board, unless operating from a shore base they were tied to their colliers.
The Prussian navy adopted what was probably their only feasible strategy, what Alfred Thayer Mahan called, the Fleet in Being. By preserving the fleet they forced the French to maintain large squadrons in both the Baltic and North Seas, and later to even blockade their own ports. The threat posed by the intact Prussian navy forced the French to devote badly needed men and material towards protecting her merchant marine. After the first few days of the war the Prussian fleet would have been outnumbered in any action and could very easily have been defeated. One interesting question is, what would a defeat at sea have done to the future growth of the German navy, when the army was well on the road to Paris?
Throughout the war the Prussians retained the ability to move along the coasts. The Augusta was able to evade the blockade to start her short career as a commerce raider. One of the shortcomings of the Prussian navy during the war was the failure to prosecute the commerce war. The French were very concerned about raiders yet only one set out and was quickly run to ground. How much more effort might have been diverted from the land battle by a determined group of commerce raiders, as was to appear later on in the World Wars.
More The Franco-Prussian War at Sea
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