 At around the time Batch 's squadron was working up for the summer cruise , Henry Abbott , the German consul in Salonika , then in the Ottoman Empire , was murdered . Further attacks on German citizens living in the area were feared , and so Batsch was ordered to sail to the Mediterranean Sea to stage a naval demonstration in June 1876 . After arriving with the four ironclads , he was reinforced by three unarmored vessels . After the threat of violence subsided in August , Batsch departed with Kaiser and Deutschland ; the other two ironclads remained in the Mediterranean for the rest of the summer . 
