c”Bringing Home the Body of Karl XII,” Gustaf Cederström, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. In the collections of the National Museum of Stockholm
King Karl XII of Sweden lives on in legend. Stories circulate that he used to throw snowballs to break the glass of the houses his troops slept in so they wouldn’t become to soft. Other stories say that he regularly engaged in snowball fights with his men to improve troop morale. I haven’t found any sources to confirm these stories, but it is fact that he traveled with his troops on his campaigns.
Peter Wessel Tordenskold was a Danish larger-than-life figure in the Great Northern War. I was happy to find a book by Col. Hans Christian Adamson that indicated some of the outlandish stories about the famed Danish admiral are true. Adamson recounts the following stories about him:
It was common for ships to fly with colors from another country, but it was considered a breach of naval etiquette to fire on another ship while flying a false flag. Peter Wessel encountered two warships flying Danish flags while he was flying a false flag of the Netherlands in the area where the North Sea meets Skaggerak Strait. The warships immediately ran up Swedish flags and began firing on him. Fortunately, he got away.
On another occasion, he encountered a ship flying a British flag, The ship even looked British, but it fired on him. He changed his Dutch flag to Danneborg and fired back. The other ship ran up a Swedish flag, identifying itself as the enemy. The firing resumed until Capt Wessel was down to forty-four rounds of powder. He ran up a white flag and sent men to row to the other ship and tell the captain that he can go freely because he was out of powder, but that if he wanted to continue the battle, he would have to lend him some more powder. It turned out the other captain was British, but sailing a ship that had been sold to Swedish privateers, but kept him on as captain. (Adamson, 2270-2381)
Flying under false flags was common and accepted, but naval etiquette implied that ships shouldn’t fire their cannons while flying a false flag.
The military historian I consult with thinks this story provides a commentary on how poorly the peasant soldiers were treated in the Great Northern War. For a ship commander to make sport of a battle and consider continuing it when it was really unnecessary illustrates how the crew was considered expendable–literally cannon fodder. He points out that the captain rarely dies in a sea battle–it’s the deck crew that sustains the heaviest casualties.
Source: Col. Hans Christian Adamson, Admiral Thunderbolt: The Spectacular Career of Peter Wessel, Norway’s Greatest Sea Hero. Pickle Partners Publishing, 2016.