HMS Sverige

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Career

Constructor	Götaverken, Gothenburg
Launched:	3 May 1915
Commissioned:	14 May 1917
Struck:	30 January 1953
Fate:	scrapped 1958
General Characteristics
Displacement:	6852 t standard; 7688 t full load
Length:	119.7 m waterline 120 m overall
Width:	18.63 m
Draft:	6.25 m
Armament:	4 × 283 mm (11 in) (2×2) 8 × 152 mm (6 in) (1×2, 6×1) 6 × 75 mm (3×2) 2 × 57 mm (1×2)
Propulsion:	12 Yarrow boilers; 2 Kockums-Curtis ungeared turbines; 4 three-blade propellers 20,000 hp = 22.5 knots trials
Range:	2720 nautical miles at 14 knots (5,000 km at 26 km/h)
Complement:	427

Sverige was a Swedish Pansarskepp (Coastal Battleship) during the last year of World War I and onward into the fifties. Her cost was approximately 12 million kronor in 1912, and the entire sum was raised in public in a nationwide fundraising campaign that gained over 15 million (approximately 650 mKr, in 2005 Kr) The fundraising was done because of the Karl Staaff government's reluctance to spend money on a new battleship.

[edit] Background

The struggle for maritime power in the early 20th century in no way avoided to affect Sweden. After the dissolving of the union with Norway in 1905, the situation was tense with the Russian Empire in the east, Germany south of the Baltic Sea, and Norway, traditionally an anglophile country. In 1911, battle-ready units from the Royal Navy and the German Imperial navy cruised around in the North Sea. War was close. As the latest Swedish coastal battleship Oscar II was a typical pre-Dreadnought ship (2×8"guns, 17.8 knots), the need for a new class of ships was huge. Seaworthiness, armament, armour and speed, all had to be improved according to the multiple new technologies that had arrived. In 1911, the parliament voted (with a small majority) funds for the building of the new vessel, known as the F-boat, after the alternative that was choosed from various options (A, B, C, D, D1, D2, E, E1, E2 and F, varying in size from 4,800 to 7,500 metric tons and with armaments and speed in various arrangements accordingly). When Karl Staaff became prime minister in the fall of 1911, the funding was postponed. This caused the "Pansarbåtinsamlingen", a fundraising aiming at the 12m Kronor the ship was estimated to cost. In little over 3 months, 15m was raised, and the government had to accept the money, and place an order of the first F-boat, Sverige.