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Rh Abstract of the German High Sea Fleet in the North Sea, including Reserves in that Sea and the Baltic (see Table III):

Germany's High Sea Fleet is based on Wilhelmshaven, and her ships in the Baltic on Kiel. The canal which connects the Baltic Sea with the River Elbe is about sixty-two miles long, and at the prescribed speed of 5.3 knots per hour it would take a ship thirteen hours to get through it. Its channel is, at present, too shallow to allow of the passage of ships of the Dreadnought type, but the work of deepening the canal is going on, and will probably be completed in 1915. The alternative route from the Baltic by the Little and Great Belts, the Kattegat and Skager Rak, is from 600 to 700 miles long; in winter often infested by ice, and at all seasons dangerous, owing to dense fogs which prevail in these shallow and contracted waters.