SMS Seydlitz - Paul Wright RSMA

Original oil on canvas, framed, signed lower left. 

Canvas size 24 x 36 inches.

SMS Seydlitz was a battlecruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), built in Hamburg. She was ordered in 1910 and commissioned in May 1913, the fourth battlecruiser built for the High Seas Fleet. She was named after Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, a Prussian general during the reign of King Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War.  Seydlitz represented the culmination of the first generation of German battlecruisers, which had started with the Von der Tann in 1906 and continued with the pair of Moltke-class battlecruisers ordered in 1907 and 1908.

Paul writes: "S.M.S. Seydlitz has an interesting story: Her captain Manritz Edegy and his wife 'adopted' 'their' battlecruiser.  Seydlitz was a hero ship having suffered terrible casualties both at Dogger Bank and Jutland.  At the end of the war, she led the German Navy to surrender.

My picture shows Seydlitz coming to her berth.  At each return, the captain's wife was waiting, guiding their 'beloved ship' to her moorings."