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John
Ericsson and the Transformation of Swedish Naval Doctrine
by
Jan
Glete
Stockholm
University, Sweden
John
Ericsson and the Revolution in Naval Warfare 1850-1880
Swedish
National Defense College, Stockholm
Symposium,
14 November 2003
During the nineteenth century the
Swedish navy faced both the challenge of a fundamentally new strategic
situation and that of the technological revolution in naval warfare. The
end result was in fact a rather happy one as new technology offered
interesting opportunities for a minor navy, which had to concentrate on
defence against sea borne invasion. The transformation process was
however long and difficult as the formulation of a new doctrine was
hampered both by strong traditions and a profound uncertainty about the
potential and direction of technological development.[1]
This article discusses the role of
the Swedish-American inventor and consulting engineer John Ericsson
(1803-1889) in the transformation of the strategic and tactical
doctrines of the Swedish navy. He was an important person in that
process. Ericsson did not offer any lasting solution to the problems
that the navy faced but, during a period when Swedish naval
policy-makers were at a loss about what to do with the technological
revolution, he offered solutions which proved essential as stopgap
measures. Furthermore, Ericsson prestige and popularity in Sweden also
made him influential even when his monitor system had lost most of its
value for Swedish defence.[2]
Why was it possible for a consulting engineer who lived on the other
side of the Atlantic to play an important and for a time crucial role in
the transformation of the Swedish navy? Why was not the naval
administration with its naval architects and officers or industrial
companies in Sweden able to offer more interesting ideas to the navy and
the policy-makers? One answer is that Ericsson's role for the Swedish
navy was not at all unique in this period. Many of the innovations,
which led to a revolutionary transformation of naval warfare from around
1850 to 1880, were not initiated by navies or entrepreneurs used to
supply the naval organisations with weapons and equipment. It was not
radical changes within the navies or in their strategic and tactical
doctrines that were the cause of the revolution in naval technology. It
was the great nineteenth century industrial upsurge which gave dynamics
to the naval revolution, both by changing technology and at the same
providing governments with the financial means to invest in advanced
warships and weapons.
The navies were not generally conservative or reactionary but it was not
their active search for new technology that led the development in the
mid-nineteenth century. The steam engine, the screw and the iron hull
were all used by civilian ship-owners before the navies adopted them.
Even modern guns and later the new torpedoes were mainly developed by
new mechanical engineering firms and steelworks which saw the navies and
the armies as interesting markets for their new high-technology. The
Swedish navy is a good illustration of this. It was generally
open-minded about new technology but frequently at a loss of how to
transform it into strategically and tactically efficient combinations of
ships and weapons.
Industrialisation and the growth of
know-how about modern naval technology outside the navies radically
changed the international market conditions for naval armament. Earlier,
most navies had designed and built their own warships and it was rare
that sailing warships were imported. Now, many navies had to import
technology but, on the other hand, advanced technology was readily
available on the private market. Major navies did retain the capability
to design warships, that is, to combine the best available technologies
into ships useful for the type of war they intended to fight. But
private inventors and shipbuilders became competitive in that branch of
engineering too. Several smaller navies ceased to design their own
warships. Instead they imported ships from private shipbuilders in major
industrial countries or built ships to designs supplied by private firms
or consulting naval architects. Several warship designs of private
origin existed on the international market from the 1860s. Of these,
John Ericsson’s monitor system was that which was the most deviant
from traditional naval architecture. Sweden was one of the few countries
that imported warship designs from the United States rather than from
Great Britain or France but, somewhat ironically, Sweden had first
exported the designer to that country.[3]
In the mid-nineteenth century the
Swedish navy had two main components: the sailing battle fleet with
ships-of-the-line and frigates and the archipelago flotilla with
gunboats powered by oars. These two forces originally had clearly
defined and strictly complementary tasks. The battle fleet should
control the open sea or at least limit the enemy’s ability to control
it. The archipelago fleet had primarily been intended for two key
operational areas: the archipelago in the Gulf of Finland during wars
with Russia and the archipelago between Gothenburg and Oslo during wars
with Denmark-Norway. These archipelagos were limited in extent but the
eighteenth century wars had proved that control of them for logistics
was decisive for major army operations. This had made the Swedish
archipelago fleet an important and prestigious force.[4]
The results of the Napoleonic Wars
fundamentally changed these pre-conditions for Swedish strategic
planning. Finland was lost to Russia in 1809 and Norway was unified with
Sweden in 1814, although only in a loose union. The old threat of a
two-front war against both Russia and Denmark-Norway, which had been a
reality as late as in the War of 1808-09, was eliminated but
considerable parts of the population and important strategic positions
in the eastern Baltic were lost with Finland. The land frontiers to
potential enemies had been radically reduced in length and strategic
importance. The northern parts of Scandinavia were not suited for major
military operations and consequently of limited strategic importance in
the nineteenth century and Sweden-Norway had got an almost insular
strategic situation. The most important threat to Sweden was from now on
a large-scale sea borne invasion from Russia, a European great power
that possessed both a superior navy and a much superior army.[5]
Internationally, this was a unique threat and Swedish defence-planners
had a special problem of striking a balance. Other states could assume
that an invasion would primarily come by land and coast defence meant
mainly defence against naval bombardments and limited attacks on
strategic positions along the coast. Those few countries threatened by
invasion of a superior army across the sea had naval superiority or
parity compared to potential invaders. Sweden must assume that its armed
forces would be markedly inferior on both land and sea and it had to
seek safety by exploiting her unusual geographical position.[6]
In strategic terms, Sweden’s
geographical position was composed of the Baltic Sea, the archipelagic
coast and the relatively extensive and sparsely populated land surface.
As a heritage from earlier periods, the country had three different
forces for these tasks: the sea-going sailing fleet, the archipelago
fleet and the army. Much of the public debate about defence policy was
shaped by those who spoke for one of these separate parts of the defence
establishment. They usually claimed that one of these forces should be
made strong enough to resist a major invasion and that one or both of
the other two might be more or radically reduced to avoid duplications.[7]
Traditionally, military and naval historians have described Swedish
defence policy in the nineteenth century as orientated towards a
"central defence strategy" which is supposed to have caused a
neglect and decay of the navy. This is not correct, at least not in the
sense that the navy was more "neglected" than the army. Both
declined in relative importance in the European balance of power but
this was a result of the generally peaceful conditions in northern
Europe and a temporary Swedish economic stagnation compared to some
other states in the early phase of European industrialisation. The
"central defence" concept was actually the basic defensive
strategic doctrine for the army. It should during its mobilisation phase
be concentrated to the interior of the country in order to force an
invading enemy to extend his lines of operation and weaken his main
forces before a decisive battle was fought somewhere in central Sweden.
This strategy was also supposed to give the Swedish army time to train
both its part-time soldiers and the only briefly trained conscripts, and
form them into combat units with some coherence. It would also make it
easier to bring in reinforcements from Norway. Rather than giving the
Swedish army top priority this strategic concept is part of the
explanation of why major army reforms actually were delayed until the
late nineteenth century.
Actually little changed in the
resource allocation within the armed forces and all three components
were retained with only minimal changes up to the 1860s. The sailing
fleet was kept at a nominal strength of ten ships-of-the-line, the
archipelago fleet had about 200 gunboats and the army remained largely
unchanged in size and regimental structure. Investments were made in a
new central depot fortress, Karlsborg, which was an important part of
the army's strategic doctrine, but the fortifications protecting
Stockholm and Karlskrona from a naval attack also underwent major
modernisations.[8]
There is nothing in this which indicates any reorientation of Swedish
defence policy in order to reduce the role of the navy in the basic task
of a defensive strategy: to at limit the operational freedom of the
enemy as much as possible. How the existing naval forces should fulfil
that task in the new strategic situation was, however, not stated
officially by the government. Its ability to do so was a main object in
the public debate.
This defence policy met the
challenges and opportunities of a fundamentally new strategic situation
with surprisingly little structural change. The conservative approach
was partly the result of political and economic circumstances, which
restrained reforms. The Swedish political system made it much easier for
the government to get funds for existing structures than for changes. It
may, however, also be argued that the existing Swedish system until the
1860s provided a working and fairly rational solution to the problem of
delaying a superior invader sufficiently long for help to arrive.
Sweden-Norway could not defeat Russia alone but the union states could
avoid being decisively defeated until the European balance of power
could provide help from other great powers. The sailing fleet could act
as a fleet-in-being and tie the bulk of the Russian battle fleet in a
blockade of Karlskrona. This would substantially reduce Russia’s
transport capacity for the invading army as the sailing warships were
important as troop transports for Russia which only had a small
mercantile marine. The sailing fleet was in a sense a part of the army's
central defence strategy. Most of the archipelago fleet was based at
Stockholm and had its main role in the regional defence of the capital
and the strategically important Lake Mälaren valley. It might also be
used on the other large Swedish lakes, Vänern and Vättern, which from
1832 were connected with the Baltic Sea and with Skagerack by the new Göta
Canal.[9]
Naval control of the great Swedish lakes was important for operations on
land as the army that was free to use the lakes had considerably greater
operational freedom in interior Sweden.
Finally, the sailing fleet and the
Karlskrona naval base had a political role. If a British or French fleet
arrived in the Baltic Sea to cut the sea lines of communication for an
invading Russian army it required a base and Karlskrona was suitably
placed. The investments in fortifications and the addition of new docks
up to 1860 was partly a result of Karlskrona's intended role for an
allied fleet.[10]
For the Bernadotte kings and for members of the Swedish political elite
who had an interest in European power politics it was also important
that the Swedish battle fleet formed a substantial and visible part of
an allied fleet that made an end on a Russian invasion or threat of
invasion. To many in Sweden and Norway, a sailing fleet was however
closely associated with fears of an activist foreign policy directed by
the king. It was suspected that such a fleet might be used in offensive
alliances with great powers, most probably in attempts to re-conquer
Finland. In Sweden, this made the sailing fleet, or the “great
fleet” (Stora flottan), politically suspect and the Parliament
(Riksdagen) tried to limit it in order to reduce royal power over
foreign policy. In Norway, the Parliament (Stortinget) said
emphatically no to the King’s plans to build Norwegian ships-of the
line, which would have strengthened Sweden’s battle fleet in the
Baltic Sea.[11]
John Ericsson entered naval
technology in the mid-1830s with his new screw system for steamships. He
was not alone in developing such a system but, compared to other
inventors of the screw, he had an unusual combination of know-how.
Ericsson was already a successful and innovative designer of steam
engines, he increasingly became a theoretically skilled naval architect
and he had a military background as engineer and infantry officer. He
was able to design not only propulsion systems but also ships and their
machinery and he was interested in radical changes in naval warfare. The
first warship built to his design was the screw sloop Princeton,
launched in 1843 for the U S Navy.[12]
In 1843-44 a young Swedish naval engineering officer, Bror Johan Jonzon,
was sent to Great Britain and the United States to study iron
shipbuilding and screw propulsion. He studied both Rattler, the
first British warship with screw (also launched in 1843) and Princeton
and he reported that John Ericsson had been very helpful towards him
during his visit in the United States. In August 1844 Jonzon recommended
Ericsson's screw system as it had no gear drive, made it possible to
place the machinery low in the hull and developed less vibrations
compared to the British system.[13]
Jonzon had been sent out because
the Swedish naval leadership already was interested in the screw for
major warships and his report had important effects. Already in 1844-45
rear admiral Johan Henrik Kreüger, president of the Navy Board (Förvaltningen
av Sjöärendena) and the minister of the navy, rear admiral Carl
August Gyllengranat, were convinced about the future potential of the
screw for warships.[14]
They wished to build a Swedish copy of Princeton. This resulted
in the 1,200 tons corvette Gefle, which was designed in 1845 and
launched at Karlskrona in 1847. It was somewhat longer than Princeton
and used Ericsson's screw system.[15]
Gefle was one of the early screw warships in the world and as
Swedish naval expenditures for new construction in the 1840s were
strictly limited it is interesting that a substantial part of them were
spent on a radically new type of ship. The navy was evidently interested
in new technology. It is probable that the fact that a Swedish engineer
had a key position in the development of the screw and that a full-scale
screw warship had already been built to his design made it easier to
introduce the screw in the Swedish navy than in some other navies. The
contacts between Ericsson and the Swedish navy was not as intense in
these years as they were in the 1860s but leading Swedish naval officers
and technical specialists in the navy trusted his competence and
believed that the screw was a relatively mature technology. The screw
technology rapidly became familiar to Swedish marine engineers and
introduced in the Swedish mercantile marine. Assistance from Ericsson
was not required after the initial transfer of the technology.
There was a marked difference
between the screw and the monitor system in its appeal to the broad
public however. John Ericsson was evidently not a Swedish national hero
in the 1840s. This became obvious in the 1847-48 Parliamentary session
when C. A. Gyllengranat as minister of the navy introduced a naval
program where he declared that screw ships-of-the-line should be the
backbone of the future navy. In its day it was a radical program – no
other leading policy-maker in any country had openly declared that all
future capital ships were to be powered by steam engines and the screw.
The Parliament did not approve the program, partly because the screw was
regarded as untried, partly because the majority did not like the idea
of major investments in the seagoing fleet.[16]
Dramatic events close to Sweden soon made the Parliament change its
mind. The war between Denmark and German forces in Schleswig-Holstein in
1848-50 and the large British and French operations in the Baltic
against Russia in 1854-55 made it clear that the Baltic quickly and
unexpectedly might become a war zone. Considerable funds were voted for
reconditioning of the existing fleet. Parts of these funds were used for
converting two sailing ships-of-the- line of around 2,800 tons to screw
steamers from 1852 to 1856 and the conversion of two more were planned
in these years. Two smaller screw warships of 800 and 400 tons were
launched in 1852-53. Up to 1858 the minister of the navy informally
followed a long-term plan which was generally similar to that presented
to the Parliament in 1848. After that, no long-term plan existed but the
Parliament voted money for new construction of two steam frigates (2 100
tons) of which one was launched in 1862. The second was cancelled by the
government in late 1861 due to rising doubts about the combat value of
wooden warships.
It was an advantage that Ericsson's
screw system had been tested in the navy for several years before these
conversions of capital ships were started. Teething troubles had been
solved and no foreign assistance was necessary. No change is visible in
the naval doctrines but it is obvious that the seagoing battle fleet had
become more politically acceptable. The screw had also made it look more
modern and versatile while the future of the oared forces had become
uncertain. Steamers could use the Swedish archipelago more freely than
sailing warships and the oared flotilla looked increasingly obsolescent
as a fighting force, except for amphibious warfare. Its ability to
defend the archipelago against modern steam warships was in doubt. One
partial answer was the screw gunboat armed with shell guns. A prototype
of 170 tons and one shell gun was launched in 1850, followed by a series
of 10 slightly larger boats with two shell guns launched from 1856 to
1862. They were built to domestic designs made by Swedish officers and
engineers, but the prototype, a very early example of the screw on a
small warship, must have been easier to design with knowledge of
Ericsson's screw system. They were similar in general capabilities to
the "Crimean gunboats" built in large numbers for the British
navy from 1854 on but they were smaller and the guns were lighter as
they were not intended for bombardments of fortresses.[17]
Although small, the Swedish steam
navy of the 1850s was composed of the same type of ships as the major
navies: ships-of-the-line, large and small cruisers and gunboats. Of
these, only the gunboats had been produced in series but the long-term
plan of the government was to create a balanced steam fleet with
ships-of-the-line, frigates, corvettes and gunboats. The screw had by
the late 1850s clearly made a major contribution, indeed the only major
contribution to the modernisation of the Swedish navy. It had however
probably also delayed the development of new naval doctrines. Naval
officers adopted new technology in the belief that it made the
traditional naval organisation, its ships and its doctrine more credible
in the eyes of the policymakers and the public. For a time they were
right and the navy was given substantial funds for ships, guns and
training at sea. Although Ericsson, his screw system and the Princeton
design had been influential in a few years in the 1840s his connections
with the Swedish navy had practically ceased after that. There were no
discussions or dialogue between him and the Swedish naval establishment
about new technology and its possible influence on Swedish naval
doctrine. As John Ericsson himself has claimed that he had developed the
monitor system and other new devices for naval warfare in order to
provide his native country with efficient defence against Russia this
lack of contacts before 1862 is surprising.[18]
The
introduction of armoured warship in Europe in the late 1850s and the
rapid increase in size for capital warships which had started in that
decade made it clear that the small Swedish ships-of-the-line were
becoming obsolete as capital warships, even when fitted with screw
propulsion. Reforms were inevitable and a parliamentary committee
working in 1861-62 proposed a future navy with six broadside-armed
armoured ships as the main force. These ideas were almost immediately
overtaken by events. The events were the surprising news in spring 1862
that the U S Navy had introduced a radically new type of warship,
designed by John Ericsson. Most sensationally, the prototype had fought
an enemy armoured ship of four times its own size with considerable
success. This news had a great impact on the Swedish public, which not
unnaturally became enthusiastic of the important role which Ericsson and
his monitors rapidly gained in the great drama in North America.
Among
the least impressed were the Swedish sea officers. The totally
unconventional monitor was obviously not what most of them had expected
of the future. It was not a ship that a seaman used to high hulls and a
complicated rig took to the open sea with great confidence in its
ability to defeat an enemy or escape from a superior enemy force.
Neither was it a small vessel suitable for mass production and
amphibious warfare, which the archipelago fleet was used to. To the
public it looked as an ideal defensive weapon system, a not too
expensive warship suited to a nation which had no offensive ambitions
but ambitions to fight off an invading great power. Public opinion and
the rising bourgeois and farmer groups had also, at this very moment,
become very important and even decisive for Swedish defence policy. Up
to the late 1850s, the kings, Karl XIV Johan (Marshal Bernadotte) and
his son Oscar I, held the political initiative in defence policy and in
policy in general. Their ability to extract increased funds for military
purposes from the Parliament was limited but they had wide discretionary
power to administrate the existing armed forces. No group was able to
seriously challenge the technological and professional competencies,
which existed in the military and naval administration.
Political
development in the late 1850s and the 1860s rapidly diminished this
sphere of action for the Swedish monarch. Especially the navy and its
transformation became dominated by decisions in the Parliament, rather
than by the king and the naval administration. At the same time, the
naval administration rapidly and decisively lost the initiative in
technical questions related to the navy. Some naval officers and former
officers, especially those with a liberal ideology, were influential in
the Parliament but they were not always representative for the opinion
among the naval officer corps. Officers and policymakers who actively
searched for new technology took personal contacts with engineers and
private companies who had solutions which looked more interesting than
those, which the naval administration could provide.
Baltzar von Platen, the minister of
the navy in 1862-68 when the monitor system was introduced, was not a
career naval officer but a rich liberal aristocrat with financial
interests in modern industry. Von Platen had served as a naval officer
in his youth but he had for a long time argued against the sailing
battle fleet. He held the opinion that too many Swedish naval officers
were uninterested in coastal defence problems and that they had joined
the navy because they dreamed of blue-water expeditions with sailing
ships. He saw the low and totally unrigged monitor as a useful antidote
to that. Von Platen was closely assisted by Axel Adlersparre, a
reform-minded naval officer who earlier had been a leading spokesman for
a group of young officers who held the idea that Sweden should have a
small but well-trained battle fleet. Adlersparre had been in American
waters in 1861-62, commanding a frigate and he had met John Ericsson
when the original Monitor was under construction. Adlersparre
immediately became an enthusiastic admirer of the monitor system and
John Ericsson's most important contact in Sweden. In the decisive years
in the 1860s, Adlersparre was the practical leader of a large-scale
reorganisation of the Swedish navy.[19]
Support from public opinion and an
active minority among the sea officers did provide funds for four
Swedish monitors, which were completed from 1865 to 1871. They were
designed by the Swedish naval architect J. C. A. d’Ailly but Ericsson
provided him with the necessary information about his monitor design.
The first three monitors of 1,500 tons had almost exactly the same main
dimensions as the Ericsson-designed Passaic class monitors in the
U S Navy, while the fourth was slightly larger to provide for additional
armour and speed.[20]
In the same period Norway also built four monitors. The two union states
had for a time a homogeneous and substantial fleet of medium-sized
armoured warships. For both navies it was important that the prestige of
the monitor system and John Ericsson’s international reputation could
be transformed into political support from majorities in the two
parliaments for new construction. Like other navies, they urgently
required modern armoured warships with heavy armour-piercing guns and
the monitor was a quickly available solution, which had the advantage of
being tested in actual warfare. Whatever its shortcomings, it was
evidently not only an inventor's eccentric idea. It was used in actual
warfare more than any other type of armoured warship in this period and
the U S Navy appeared to be satisfied with it.
In Sweden, the monitors were in the
1860s and early 1870s intended to form the new seagoing fleet together
with un-armoured corvettes with heavy armour-piercing guns. The original
four were only the first batch of a series of projected monitors. Around
1870 an enlarged monitor of 2,500 tons was designed and in 1871 the navy
minister declared that the government intended to build six such ships.[21]
The strategic role of this monitor/corvette fleet in Swedish defence
strategy was however unclear. It was never stated why the monitor,
rather than any other type of major or medium-sized warship, was optimal
for Sweden’s defence and how its special combination of mobility,
firepower and protection should give the Swedish navy tactical
advantages. Its value was usually expressed in negative forms. The large
size and high costs of modern armoured battleships made it impossible
for Sweden to build such ships in substantial numbers. The monitor could
mount a few guns, as heavy as the heaviest on a full-size battleship.
Its armour was as thick as that on the largest battleships of the time
and it covered the whole ship, which gave an impression of
invulnerability. In an age when technology and strength expressed in
calibres of guns and thickness of armour had a broad appeal to the
public, the monitor had impressive figures to show for a limited amount
of money.
The monitor system did not convince
the majority of the Swedish sea officers however. Few of them dreamt of
a battleship fleet but the tactical and strategic usefulness of the
monitor was increasingly questioned. The original Monitor had
fought a successful "David and Goliath" style battle against
the much larger Virginia (ex Merrimack) at Hampton Roads
in 1862 and it was this epic event which had shaped the mental picture
of the monitor for the Swedish public. In the American Civil War the
monitors had however mainly been used for bombardments of coastal
fortifications and for blockades of ports in more or less sheltered
waters. This was offensive warfare against an inferior and largely
stationary enemy but this type of warfare was irrelevant for Sweden.
If
Sweden should have a seagoing fleet of medium-sized warships the
ambition must be that the ships were able to defend the long Swedish
coast and substantially limit the operational freedom of an invading
enemy who had superior naval forces. It must be able to be rapidly
redeployed from one part of the coast to another facing the risk of
meeting superior enemy forces and it must be able to avoid being
defeated either by escaping or by ability to survive enemy attacks. The
monitor was slow and, although it was safe to take to the open sea in
heavy weather, it could only open its gun ports in calm and moderate
seas. Its main asset had originally been its invulnerability to all
existing guns but the increased penetrative power of guns soon made its
armour protection insufficient. The only solution was to increase the
size of the monitor but, as the Swedish navy found with the enlarged
monitor design around 1870, that meant an expensive warship with much
armour but limited striking power in proportion to its size and cost.
The
ram and the new underwater explosive weapons (mines and torpedoes) were
also serious threats to the monitor as the extremely low hull had little
reserve buoyancy. If it was damaged below waterline it would rapidly
sink. The low speed made it also difficult for the monitor to escape
from a superior enemy. The loss of invulnerability meant that the
monitor rapidly declined from a seagoing warship, able to move from one
part of the coast to another and survive attacks from enemy battleships,
to an oversized and expensive armoured gunboat, which could be expected
to fight with success only in narrow passages or in shallow water where
large ships were at a disadvantage.
The
monitor had been introduced in the Swedish navy without prior discussion
about the doctrine for a future seagoing Swedish fleet. It proved
impossible to define a realistic doctrine to which its special
combination of mobility, protection and striking power was the optimal
solution. However, for about a decade the Swedish naval officers were
not able to formulate their criticism in positive terms, as they had no
realistic doctrine for the role of a modern seagoing fleet in the
defence of Sweden against major invasions. John Ericsson had provided
them with a system that at least generated parliamentary support for
medium-sized warships. The principle, but hardly the reality of a
seagoing fleet survived with the monitor.
Sweden
had however also a strong tradition of pure archipelagic defence. There
were important narrow passages to major ports, especially Stockholm,
which had to be protected against an enemy who intended to bombard or
take control of cities and ports. What could modern technology offer for
this clearly defined naval doctrine instead of the traditional oared
gunboats or the new screw gunboats? The latter could not carry heavy
armour-piercing guns and they were un-armoured, a severe drawback in a
period which was fascinated by the new armour protection technology.
Several types of small armoured gunboats were designed in Sweden in the
1860s but not built. In 1867-68, two prototypes were launched, one
designed by the director of Motala Verkstad, Otto Edward Carlsund and
the other by John Ericsson. Motala Verkstad was Sweden's leading company
in mechanical engineering and it had supplied the navy with all its
steam engines and also built the four monitors.
Carlsund and Ericsson were without
doubt the two leading Swedish-borne marine architects of their age and
they were also the two most successful Swedish designers of
internationally competitive steam engines. Their ingenuity made it
possible to build armoured vessels of only about 250 tons with one very
heavy gun. Ericsson’s vessel, a miniature monitor with a fixed turret,
had turret armour as thick as on contemporary battleships. The speed and
seaworthiness of both vessels were very limited but they were useful as
mobile artillery platforms in the inner archipelago. After comparative
tests[22],
Ericsson’s design was selected and eight more vessels were built up to
1875, seven of them of an enlarged design of 450 tons. It is of interest
that Ericsson's design had prevailed in competition with Carlsund, the
leading mechanical engineer in Sweden at this time. In spite of that he
had been absent from Sweden since forty years he was still the best
designer of cost-efficient modern warships tailor-made to special
Swedish naval demands.
This meant that both the seagoing
fleet and the archipelago fleet had been renewed with warships designed
on the other side of the Atlantic. From 1862 to 1875 John Ericsson’s
ideas about warship design dominated the Swedish navy. The Swedish navy
of 1875 primarily consisted of warships built to Ericsson's ideas but
while the monitor was a technological solution to a non-existing
doctrine the small armoured gunboat was designed to suit a well-defined
and almost uniquely Swedish doctrine.[23]
As the navy, rather than the army, was the part of the Swedish defence
that was modernised and reorganised in these years, it might be said
that Ericsson's technological influence on Swedish defence policy was
larger than any other individual. The reorganisation was more
comprehensive than technological as it also involved a radical reduction
of the personnel who on the other hand got much more professional
training at sea than in the old navy. The change had however been
stimulated, indeed made possible and necessary by the technological
revolution, which reduced manpower but required intense training.
Systematic training with new types
of ships and yearly naval manoeuvres along the Swedish coast may have
stimulated intellectual development among officers who began to think
more about how new technology could be strategically and tactically used
for defence. From the mid-1870s Swedish naval policy began to be shaped
by a new doctrine, which was logically based on the potential of the new
technology for new defence strategies. Earlier, the sailing and the
oared fleets had for both technological and emotional reasons been two
separate parts of the navy. Sailing warships could not fight without
winds and their ability to operate in confined waters was limited. Oared
warships were defenceless in fresh winds at sea and could only fight in
sheltered waters. In Sweden this separation had been increased by
different traditions in two largely separate officer corps and the long
distance between the main bases for the two fleets, Karlskrona and
Stockholm. Steam technology made much of the separation irrelevant and
after a few decades of experience with steam warships the old antagonism
between the two groups in the navy had largely disappeared.[24]
From 1873 to 1875, Swedish naval
policy-makers, primarily the naval officer Fredrik Wilhelm von Otter,
formulated a strategic and tactical anti-invasion doctrine.[25]
In that, the fleet had one main task; to attack the enemy transport
fleet, either when it came close to the Swedish coast or when it had
anchored and begun to disembark the troops. A fleet transporting two or
three army corps, 30,000 to 50,000 men with horses, artillery and
equipment for an offensive campaign, was a huge and vulnerable target.
An attack on it required several fast and seaworthy vessels, which
rapidly could be sent to any threatened part of the coast and make a
concentrated strike against enemy transport vessels. The ships should be
small enough to navigate and fight in the Swedish archipelago, which
also was useful as a sheltered zone for movements along the coast. The
possibility to base the operational fleet in the archipelago made it
difficult to blockade, as an enemy could not know where a mobile and
fast fleet intended to emerge from the archipelago.
This Swedish fleet should be strong
enough to break through an enemy fleet, which protected the transports
but it should not try to fight a decisive battle with the enemy main
fleet. The efforts should as far as possible be concentrated on the
transport ships. After such an attack the surviving Swedish ships should
retire as quickly as possible and take protection in the archipelago or
a port. Serious losses were expected but this was regarded as acceptable
if the fleet was able to inflict severe losses on the enemy transports
and the army forces they carried. If these losses were large enough the
enemy’s offensive strength on land might be reduced to a level where
the Swedish army might contain and finally defeat the invader. It was
expected, even in the Swedish army's general staff, that a sizeable
fleet of this type might make the extensive archipelago north and south
of Stockholm more or less impregnable for invasion and limit the enemy
to landings on open coasts.[26]
It was a doctrine where the navy's strategically defensive role of
limiting the enemy's operational freedom could be combined with tactical
offensive actions.
The monitors and the armoured gunboats were of little use in this new
naval doctrine, except as a "position defence" force in the
archipelago, protecting important cities and ports. Nevertheless, the
strictly defensive profile in the new doctrine had a considerable
political appeal and it was soon accepted by the Parliament. Debates
about naval policy were successively reduced to the question of how
large the navy should be but its main tasks were defined. During the
1870s, the Parliament limited its support to the construction of small
but seagoing warships. This resulted mainly in a series of nine fast
(13-13.5 knots), un-armoured gunboats of 500 to 600 tons, armed with one
27,4 cm gun and one medium calibre gun. They were launched from 1874 to
1882 and designed by Göte Wilhelm Swensson, a naval architect who had
made his career in the private Swedish shipbuilding and mechanical
industry. These gunboats, an original Swedish design without any foreign
model, were partly a stopgap measure but they provided the navy a small
force with the speed and rapid striking power at sea that the monitors
and armoured gunboats totally lacked. The minister of the navy was also
looking for a suitable design for a medium-sized armoured warship and
for a fast but seagoing torpedo vessel.
By the early 1880s a new Swedish fleet had begun to take shape. It was
centred on two types of warships, moderately sized but seaworthy
armoured ships and small and fast torpedo boats. The latter were built
to British designs and were similar to torpedo craft in most other
navies. The armoured ship was a genuinely Swedish type of warship,
designed by G. W. Svensson, who from 1881 was head of the Swedish Corps
of naval engineers. The original design, which was ready by 1880, was of
2,622 tons with a speed of 13 knots. The hull was much higher than the
monitor's hull and the ship could fight in any type of weather when
enemy battleships and cruisers could fire their guns. It had two 25,4 cm
armour-piercing guns of the latest British W. G. Armstrong model,
intended to inflict damage on major enemy warships protecting the
transport fleet. It had a medium-calibre battery of three 15,2 cm
Armstrong guns, which was intended to sink as many transport ships as
possible on a short time. The armour was limited in extent as it was on
most modern armoured ships of the time but it was thick and it protected
the main armament, the machinery and the hull's floatability. The ship
had a good chance to absorb at least a few hits from heavy artillery
without losing its fighting ability. With the slow-firing guns of this
period it was believed that a fleet of such ships together with many
torpedo boats could break through an enemy line of warships and destroy
a large number of troop transports with guns and torpedoes.
John Ericsson had no role in the
development of this new doctrine and its gun-armed ships. But he still
had a role to play in relation to the public and the Parliament. He was
famous and he had a strong public reputation for favouring purely
defensive warships of moderate size rather than large and politically
controversial capital ships. Personally he was no longer committed to
the monitor concept. During the 1870s and 1880s Ericsson was mainly
interested in the development of underwater weapons and he made large
efforts to develop a torpedo and a torpedo-carrying warship. Already in
1876 Ericsson became an enthusiastic supporter of the new Swedish naval
doctrine which he believed would require a large number of fast,
seagoing warships of moderate size armed with torpedoes and a medium-calibre
gun.[27]
He made several efforts to make the Swedish navy interested in his own
torpedo design and in the new unconventional warship, which he designed
to carry this weapons.
Around 1880, Ericsson even built a
prototype torpedo vessel for his own money, the Destroyer. It had
a lightly armoured deck and it could partly be submerged when it
attacked but it was a far larger vessel than the fragile, small torpedo
boats, which became common at this time in several navies. Ericsson
argued that vessels of his type were ideal for Swedish anti-invasion
defence and, undoubtedly, the vessel (if given higher speed than the
prototype, which must have been limited by Ericsson personal resources)
answered well to the new Swedish naval doctrine. The Swedish minister of
the navy declared that he was interested in it but it appears that he
expected that the U S Navy or another major navy should show its
interest in the project before Swedish naval funds were committed to it.[28]
That never happened but it was politically important that the famous
John Ericsson was positive to the new Swedish ideas of fast seagoing
warships, primarily intended as a striking force against an invader. It
would have been a problem for the navy if he had continued to argue for
the monitor.
John Ericsson’s continued
importance is obvious in the debate in June 1883 when the Swedish
Parliament finally approved the construction of the first of the new
armoured coast defence ships. The 80-year-old engineer, who had been
absent from Sweden for 57 years, was very much present in this debate.[29]
Naval officers navy had for years been anxious to describe the new coast
defence ship as a logical modernisation of the monitor concept, a small
armoured ship with two heavy guns in a turret. It was even called
“armoured boat” (pansarbåt) to underline its small size.
Actually it was a very different type of ship than the monitor, built
for a different strategy and a widely different tactic. In the
parliamentary debate several supporters of the new ship and the minister
of the navy could quote very positive comments from John Ericsson, which
he had sent to Swedish newspaper. The minister even read a telegram from
Ericsson to underline that the national hero was behind Swedish naval
policy. Ericsson called the new ship "excellent" and the best
type of armoured ship of the smaller type that any nation had. He
suggested that it should be made a little longer, a suggestion that in
fact underlined that he did not saw it as a large ship.[30]
Ericsson claimed that a number of these armoured ships together with 20
vessels of his own Destroyer type would make Sweden impregnable
from the sea.
It is probable that Ericsson's
positive attitude partly was motivated by his interest in selling the Destroyer
concept and that he hoped that support for the armoured ship would make
the minister more positive to his own project. The effect of John
Ericsson public approval of the new type was however that the sea
officers’ and the minister’s rather populist invocation of the
monitor as the natural predecessor of the new armoured ship became
credible and difficult to argue against. The argument that torpedo
vessels were an alternative to large ships was also difficult to use
when Ericsson, an inventor of a new torpedo system, declared that it was
a complement rather than alternative to armoured ships with heavy guns.
The new Swedish coast defence fleet with moderately sized armoured ships
and flotillas of torpedo-carrying vessels, which remained the backbone
of Swedish naval doctrine until the 1940s, was founded with the full
public approval of the man who had made more than anyone else to make
the old Swedish naval doctrines obsolete.
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