Stordenskjold i Dynekilen, by Carl Neumann – http://www.tordenskjold.nu/tordenskjold.html, Public Domain, via wikimedia commons.
A Sneak Attack on the Swedes
Finding sources for the Great Northern War written in English has been a challenge. I stumbled on a volume written by Danish-born U.S. Air Force Colonel Hans Christian Adamson which has been invaluable. The stories surrounding the Norwegian sailor Peter Wessel lean to the outlandish, and I’m grateful to have a text by a military historian that leans into fact.
Dynekilen is an unexpected place for a sea battle–at the end of a narrow fjord off Skaggerak Strait, not the wide open Skaggerak Strait that separates Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The painting above depicts how crammed the fjord actually was with the Danish-Norwegian fleet crowding the Swedish fleet into the end of a strait that was about a mile and half across. Imagine a sea battle on the Mississippi River, with cannons firing at close range and troops on the banks.
Apparently, the Swedes were amassing ships and troops at Dynekilen, with a small fortress on an island in the middle of the fjord, with plans to invade Norway. Adamson’s book list the number of ships, with a dozen Swedish cargo ships and even more military vessels of various kinds.
Wessel attacked in the early morning on June 26, 1716, and by afternoon had defeated the Swedes and sailed out of the strait with many captured Swedish warships and several cargo ships. Wikipedia lists dozens of Swedish ships that were either captured or destroyed, while the Danish force had only six ships. Several sources indicated that the Swedes were hungover from a several day drinking binge, and therefore not in their usual fighting form.
This battle so far sounds confusing and chaotic, and I will return here when I can find more source material.
Sources: Col. Hans Christian Adamson, Admiral Thunderbolt: The Spectacular Career of Peter Wessel, Norway’s Greatest Sea Hero. Pickle Partners Publishing, 2016.