After watching the recent Drachinifel video on the topic: The naval side was pretty much a sideshow of the Franco-Prussian war and the only real engagement happened outside Havana of all places. The North German navy did a decent job all things considered and achieved its strategic goals (helped by French naval incompetence): They prevented the planned troop landings by French forces (in coordination with coastal artillery) and the blockade was pretty much a joke. Despite the fact that force composition was not in their favour. They happened to own the most powerful ironclad in the world at the start of the war, but they did not even have the repair facilities for its few modern ironclads until halfway through the war. As a result the major combatants were down with engine problems shortly after the war began. Even at the best of times the French had betwen a 5:1 and 10:1 advantage in naval forces, depending how you count. The few sorties by the German "battle line" to get an isolated part of the French fleet did not find any ships, although the possibility existed in the first and last part of the war. The most effective ship on the German side was probably SMS Arminius, a coastal ironclad that sortied several times and harrassed individual blockade ships. She never caught any, but she also succesfully escaped superior forces due to her shallow draft. After being prevented from doing so at first for diplomatic reasons, late in the war the navy sent out a few raiders, although with very limited success.
Given that the navy mostly sat in port during the war and barely fought in it, it had a hard time afterwards. Its funding was almost frozen at prewar levels and barely profited from the victory. Instead of any of the Admirals a senior army general, Albrecht von Stosch became head of the Imperial Navy. He actually did a decent job in making the navy more professional and oversaw the start of indegenous warship construction, but also had problems. His strategy was firmly defensive with a focus on unarmoured screw corvettes for trade protection and low draft ironclads for coastal operations. That resulted in the very flawed Sachsen class and the "adequate" SMS Oldenburg. He also always had a real problem to get sufficient funds not just because the navy had little political weight, but also because he himself was regarded as opposition by Bismarck as an old liberal and due to political mistakes e.g. after the sinking of SMS Grosser Kurfürst. The neglect of the German navy continued until the overcompensation beginning with Tirpitz.
But WI there were some more actions, which, while not changing anything strategically, make the German navies role in the war more visible? For that matter what would be the impact of an actual naval war on the French navy, which otl could point at the German unwillingness to face them and their decent performance in the land war?
Given that the navy mostly sat in port during the war and barely fought in it, it had a hard time afterwards. Its funding was almost frozen at prewar levels and barely profited from the victory. Instead of any of the Admirals a senior army general, Albrecht von Stosch became head of the Imperial Navy. He actually did a decent job in making the navy more professional and oversaw the start of indegenous warship construction, but also had problems. His strategy was firmly defensive with a focus on unarmoured screw corvettes for trade protection and low draft ironclads for coastal operations. That resulted in the very flawed Sachsen class and the "adequate" SMS Oldenburg. He also always had a real problem to get sufficient funds not just because the navy had little political weight, but also because he himself was regarded as opposition by Bismarck as an old liberal and due to political mistakes e.g. after the sinking of SMS Grosser Kurfürst. The neglect of the German navy continued until the overcompensation beginning with Tirpitz.
But WI there were some more actions, which, while not changing anything strategically, make the German navies role in the war more visible? For that matter what would be the impact of an actual naval war on the French navy, which otl could point at the German unwillingness to face them and their decent performance in the land war?
