Sea battle of Rügen (1712)

Sea battle of Rügen (1712)

Part of: Great Northern War

Swedish and Danish warships at Dranske
(detail of a contemporary copper engraving)

date	September 29, 1712 to September 30, 1712
place	Bay Libben between Dornbusch (Hiddensee) and Dranske ( Rügen ), Swedish Pomerania
output	Danish victory
consequences	Loss of the Swedish transport fleet, failure of the planned Swedish Polish campaign

Parties to the conflict
Sweden	Denmark Russian Empire
Commander
Hans Wachtmeister Jacob Kreckel	Ulrik Gyldenløve
Troop strength
1 brigantine, over 100 transport ships	5 frigates, 2 smaller warships
losses
1 brigantine stranded and burned, 14 transport ships confiscated, 42 transport ships burned or sunk	no

In the sea ​​battle of Rügen during the Great Northern War, some warships of the Danish-Norwegian fleet destroyed most of a Swedish transport fleet that was supposed to bring supplies to Rügen and the besieged Stralsund . There was no major fighting between the main forces of the two navies. The Swedish losses marked the beginning of the end of Swedish supremacy in the southern Baltic Sea .

Source location and localization

German, Danish and Swedish sources differ considerably in terms of the strength of the forces involved, the losses and the localization of the sea battle. Various information is in circulation as the location of the battle: in front of / near Dranske , Dornbusch , Cape Arkona , Wittmond / Wittmund etc. All these location information have in common that they are on the Wittow peninsula belonging to the island of Rügen (older also Wittau ) or between Wittow and Hiddensee lie. In some Danish sources, the entirety of the naval operations off Rügen in September 1712 is generally referred to as the Rügen affair (Rügen campaign).

initial situation

→ Main articles : Great Northern War  and the siege of Stralsund (1711)

In 1711 the allied Danes, Russians and Saxons attacked Swedish Western Pomerania and pushed the Swedes back to Stralsund. Since the port of the besieged city was blocked by the Danish fleet, the Swedes could only land supplies via Rügen. On December 8th of that year the Swedish fleet had brought four regiments (5000 to 6000 men) to Perth on Rügen as reinforcements. But the Russian-Saxon besiegers had received reinforcements again in May 1712 and were also supported by a Danish fleet under General Admiral Ulrik Christian Gyldenløve . With at least 10,000 more men, the Swedish field marshal Magnus Stenbock not only wanted to relieve Stralsund, but also to attack and bring the war back to Poland in order to reinstate the pro-Swedish king Stanislaus Leszczyński, who was overthrown by the Russians and Saxons in 1709 .

In order to prevent a renewed transport of supplies, the Danish fleet crossed between the Swedish naval port Karlskrona and Rügen, Danish and Swedish reconnaissance ships fought smaller battles. With only 16 ships of the line , five frigates (including two Russian) and seven smaller warships, the Danish fleet was inferior to the Swedish fleet. Swedish Admiral General Hans Wachtmeister , who was already over 70 years old , set out from Karlskrona on September 3, 1712 with 24 ships of the line and 3 frigates . Before the superior force Gyldenløve dodged from Bornholm west into the Mosund. Wachtmeister did not pursue him, however, but returned to Karlskrona, where a new transport fleet was assembled. Trusting that they had driven the Danish squadron from the southern Baltic Sea, the Swedish Admiralty College and the Reich War Council wanted to accompany the transport with only twelve galleys, but Stenbock demanded at least six more ships of the line as escorts and convinced the council. Wachtmeister moved out again with the entire Swedish navy. Undisturbed by the Danes, a Swedish transport fleet of over 100 ships, escorted by 24 liners, reached Rügen on September 26 and began to disembark Stenbock's troops.

course

Wittow peninsula, Ruegen

The Admiralty chose the flat coastal waters west of Wittmund (northernmost point of the Wittow peninsula) as the landing site. In the deeper waters of the cliffs east of Cape Arkona, liners could have protected the transport fleet better, but Wachtmeister hoped that the shallower waters would make unloading easier and faster before the Danish ships returned. Stenbock, on the other hand, had wanted to unload the ships back into the Perth roadstead. Further journeys between Karlskrona and Rügen were necessary to transport the ammunition supplies, and the unloading of the supplies also took longer than expected due to the limited number of dinghies.

In the meantime, the Danish fleet had been reinforced by a Norwegian squadron coming from the Kattegat, which until then had blocked the Swedish North Sea squadron in Gothenburg. Gyldenløve now had 22 ships of the line and six frigates and met the Swedish fleet on September 27 off Rügen. Wachtmeister immediately set sail with the warships and turned east to lure the Danish-Norwegian fleet away from the Swedish transport fleet and put it into battle on the open sea - a decision with serious consequences, because the transport fleet was now left completely without protection.

Instead of a sea battle, Gyldenløve and Wachtmeister tried to outmaneuver each other. Gyldenløve achieved the more favorable windward position , and Wachtmeister passed out and watched as five frigates from the Danish-Norwegian fleet and two smaller warships began to attack the transport fleet on the afternoon of September 29. One of the attacking frigates was commanded by the Norwegian captain Peter Wessel Tordenskiold , who was later to become admiral.

Most of the Swedish transport ships immediately cut their anchor ropes when the Danish frigates appeared, and the majority of the ships managed to escape. On the evening of September 29th, when Jakob Kreckel, the commander of the transport fleet, was able to get himself to safety with his ship, 12 Swedish ships were already lost. The remaining ships were not only shot down by the Danish cannons, but also set on fire by Danish boarding crews while the Swedish sailors fled ashore. The most valuable ships were captured or confiscated by the Danes. By September 30th, the Danes had captured 14 ships and burned 42 ships.

To bring the attacked transport fleet back under the protection of the war fleet, Wachtmeister sent a small but fast warship, but this brigantine , equipped with 18 cannons, was chased onto the beach by the superior Danish frigates and burned there by the Swedish crew themselves. The Danish and Swedish navies circled each other until October 1, before the sergeant returned to Karlskrona after the remaining transport ships had reached safe waters. According to Danish information, only about 40 transport ships are said to have escaped.

• 

  Admiral Gyldenløve

• 

  Captain Tordenskiold

• 

  Field Marshal Stenbock

• 

  Admiral Wachtmeister

consequences

Cover page of a report from September 1712 about the initially successful Swedish landing on Rügen

The loss of the Swedish transport fleet was the result of wrong decisions and misjudgments by the Swedish admiralty: the Danish fleet was not pursued and destroyed while it was still defeated, the wrong landing site was chosen for disembarkation in Rügen, and the diversionary maneuver was transparent. Wachtmeister was heavily criticized at home and his old age was blamed for his failure. Gyldenløve, in turn, justified himself to a Danish naval court for not having attacked the Swedish navy, of all things, because he had been outmaneuvered by the older and therefore much more experienced sergeant.

Even if no ships of the line were lost, the defeat at Rügen was the beginning of the loss of Swedish supremacy. The Swedish fleet was initially no longer able to supply the enclosed garrisons in Stralsund, Stettin and Wismar, and there were no longer enough transport ships available for planned further supplies. Without their supplies of provisions and ammunition lost with the transport ships, the Swedes could no longer hold out on Rügen and in Stralsund. In the course of 1712, Danish troops had also conquered the entire Swedish property in northwest Germany (Bremen-Verden) . Stenbock broke out of besieged Stralsund in November 1712, and instead of pushing far east into enemy-occupied Poland, he dodged west in order to get to the nearby and friendly duchy of Holstein-Gottorp . The planned reconquest of Poland had therefore finally failed.

With the last ammunition, Stenbock won the Battle of Gadebusch in December 1712, fought his way through Mecklenburg and actually reached the Holstein fortress Tönning in spring 1713 , where he was trapped again and had to surrender in 1714. Stralsund continued to withstand the siege, but after a new Swedish supply fleet had been driven out by the Danes off Jasmund in August 1715 , it finally surrendered in December 1715.

literature

• C. With: Gyldenløve, Ulrik Christian . In: Carl Frederik Bricka (Ed.): Dansk biografisk Lexikon. Tillige omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537-1814. 1st edition. tape 6 : Gerson-H. Hansen . Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, Copenhagen 1892, p. 347-349 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
• Joachim Krüger: The sea battle of Wittow in 1712. A contribution to the history of the Great Northern War. In: Skyllis. Journal of Underwater Archeology. Vol. 12/1, 2012, pp. 64–71.
• Jfr Stenbock: Hans W [Achtmeister] . In: Theodor Westrin, Ruben Gustafsson Berg, Eugen Fahlstedt (eds.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 2nd Edition. tape 31 : Ural vertex . Nordisk familjeboks förlag, Stockholm 1921, Sp. 222-225 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ According to the old Julian calendar, which was valid in Sweden until 1752, these were September 18 and 19.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} NDR.de: The end of the Swedish era in the Baltic Sea region (with broadcast from June 4, 2012).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Knut Lundblad, Georg Friedrick von Jenssen-Tusch: History of Karl the Twelfth King of Sweden. Perthes, Hamburg 1840 Volume 2, pp. 242-250 ( books.google.de ).
4. ↑ According to some information, the name of this brigantine is said to have been "Vita Örn" (White Eagle), not to be confused with a Swedish 30-gun frigate of the same name, which only sank a few years later.