Jutland: The Baltic Sea
Sweden’s Fleet, Part Two
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
March 2025

Jutland: Baltic Sea is an expansion book for Great War at Sea: Jutland, adding German, Swedish and Russian ships planned but not completed. It’s all brand new, making use of those Swedish and Russian ships in Jutland 2e plus 80 new pieces.

New coast-defense ships dominated the Royal Swedish Navy’s wish list from the turn of the 20th Century until the eve of the Second World War. As often happens when an idea becomes orthodoxy, discussions almost always began and ended with this nearly-unique type of warship.

But at least a little thought went to supporting the coast-defense ships with other vessels, including cruisers.

Armored Cruiser Fylgia
By the year 1901, Sweden’s maritime defense strategy depended on her torpedo craft, backed by the small fleet of armored coast defense ships. A naval committee called for two new series of cruisers, scout cruisers and larger armored cruisers, to better support the torpedo craft and conduct reconnaissance deeper in the Baltic. Parliament agreed with this assessment, but would only fund one ship, a compromise vessel slightly larger than the scout cruisers with the hardened-steel belt of an armored cruiser.

The Swedes would tout Fylgia as “the world’s smallest armored cruiser,” which only highlighted her state as a compromise vessel unsuited to either primary task. She would spend her career steaming around the globe to show the blue-and-yellow flag, which drew a great deal of attention, but also underlines her lack of a role in the Baltic.

Armored cruiser Fylgia, 1907. Painting by Jacob Hägg, father of Erik Hägg.

The Swedish Navy ordered Fylgia in October 1902, and she was laid down at the Bergsund shipyard near Stockholm almost exactly one year later. She joined the fleet in December 1907, her completion delayed by a shipyard strike. The Navy asked for a sister ship a year after Fylgia’s approval, but this time they were denied.

Fylgia displaced 4,310 tons, and with a length of 115 meters this made her just slightly larger than contemporary light cruisers built by other nations. She carried eight 152mm Model 1903 guns in four turrets, one each fore and after and two amidships, one of them on either side of the ship. She had an unusually lightweight secondary battery of fourteen 57mm guns, most of them in an armored casemate, and two torpedo tubes. She had 100mm of armor on her belt, ammunition hoists, and conning tower; 125mm on her turrets, and 35mm on her deck.

Her triple-expansion engines pumped out 12,000 horsepower; on trials she made 22.7 knots, considerably more than her disappointing design speed of 21.5 knots. From the start, she had accommodations for 50 sea cadets on top of her regular crew. She enforced Swedish neutrality during the Great War and made overseas voyages afterwards; by 1933 she was decrepit and spent six years laid up before thorough rebuilding starting in 1939 as Sweden prepared for a new war.

Flygia re-joined the fleet in late 1941, serving as a training ship during the war and resuming her long-distance cruises afterwards. Discarded in 1953, her turrets went to coastal defenses and the rest of the ship served as a target before finally meeting the scrapyard.

The 1916 Light Cruiser
Swedish Navy Captain Erik Hägg drafted a sketch in 1916 for a proposed scout cruiser and published it in the naval academy’s magazine, Tidskrift I Sjöväsende. Hägg, commander of the coast-defense ship Oscar II, the fleet flagship, was already well-known in Swedish naval circles as an author and painter, as was his father, Rear Admiral Jacob Hägg, also an author and renowned nautical painter (see above).

That pedigree gave his proposal immediate consideration by the Navy’s senior leadership. Based on his experience, Hägg argued that the squadron of armored ships should not be conducting its own reconnaissance, and the ancient torpedo cruisers of the Örnen class, displacing 800 tons and no longer capable of even their design speed of 19 knots, could not fill this role. Nor did destroyers or torpedo boats have the endurance. The fleet needed a fast, modern scout cruiser to seek out the enemy and to provide heavier gunnery support to the torpedo flotillas.

Hägg based his design on the German light cruiser Pillau, formerly the Russian Muravayev Amurski. His cruiser would be smaller than the German ship, but faster, and carry heavier guns than previous German light cruisers. She would also have a lesser draft, an important consideration for a Baltic navy. Citing the destruction of the German cruiser Emden by the Australian Sydney, Hägg wrote that the Swedish cruiser needed heavier armament; Emden’s 105mm (4.1-inch) guns had been badly out-ranged by Sydney’s 6-inch weapons. That had not been a major factor in the battle, though Hägg may not have known this thanks to wartime censorship; the Australian ship’s heavier striking power had been decisive, however. The Bofors-made 152mm (6-inch) Model 1903 gun, in its enclosed gunhouse, had also been mounted on Oscar II and Hägg was well aware that this was the largest weapon that could be hand-loaded by a single gunner.

Erik Hägg’s 1916 cruiser sketch.

The Hägg cruiser would displace 3,000 tons, with only light armor protecting the conning tower. She would have four 152mm (6-inch) guns in enclosed gunhouses, six 75mm guns in shielded mounts on the upper deck, and two underwater torpedo tubes, one on either side. She would also be capable of laying mines. The Navy apparently asked for three of them, and the Swedish Parliament balked at the price tag. Each cruiser cost 6 million kronor, compared to 10.8 million for a new Sverige-class coast defense ship.

Hägg then presented an even smaller version, removing the 75mm guns and cutting displacement to 2,500 tons, to produce a much less capable ship at only a slightly lower price. Even this ship was rejected. Sweden would not build a light cruiser during this period, but Hägg would go on to become a very successful author.

Armored Cruiser Svenskund
Following the rejection of Hägg’s cruiser proposal, the Swedish Navy tried again in 1921 with a much larger ship. This would be a much more modern design, showing similar characteristics to the proposed German and Dutch fast armored cruisers of the Great War period, though it’s not clear if the Swedes had any knowledge of these proposals. She also bears a resemblance to the Ansaldo coast-defense ship offered to Sweden in the late 1930’s.

The proposed ship bore the project name Svenskund (a 1790 sea battle against the Russians; the largest naval battle ever fought in the Baltic and Sweden’s greatest naval victory). She would displace 8,600 tons, making her the largest warship built in Sweden up to that time. She would carry an armored belt of 120mm thickness (4.7 inches; sufficient to repel the fire of light cruisers but not that of battleships), with an armored deck of 60mm and 150mm on her turrets.

There would be three turrets, one forward and two aft, each with a pair of Bofors-made 210mm (8.2-inch) guns. These would presumably be a newer model than the M/98 guns that equipped some of the older Swedish coast-defense ships. Secondary armament would consist of eight 120mm guns in a central casemate battery, plus an array of light weapons for defense against aircraft. She would be turbine-powered (the Swedes having given up on diesels by this point), and been expected to make 29 knots.

Svenskund would have shared the Sverige-class coast defense ships’ weak underwater protection, though like Sverige she would have had a sauna built into her hull. The Swedish Navy asked for three of them, but Parliament rejected them along with the fourth ship of the Sverige class.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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