What happened at the Battle of Jasmund?
On 17 March 1864, during the Second Schleswig War, a small Prussian squadron under Captain Eduard Jachmann sailed out of Swinemünde to challenge the Danish ships blockading the Prussian Baltic coast. Off the island of Rügen it met Rear Admiral Carl Edvard van Dockum's squadron, exchanged broadsides and then, in a running fight of about two hours, used its speed to escape back to port. It was the Prussian Navy's first battle, and the Danish blockade held.1
In 1864 the Danish fleet was far stronger than the Prussian, and from the first weeks of the war it shut the Prussian ports on the Baltic. Off Rügen, on 17 March, the young Prussian Navy made its first attempt to break out, and fought its first battle.2
Who won the Battle of Jasmund and why?
Denmark won the day, although neither side lost a ship. Van Dockum's squadron, with far more and heavier guns, turned back the Prussian sortie and kept Swinemünde blockaded for the rest of the war. The Prussian corvettes got home only because they were faster, and they never came out to give battle again.3
Background
The war was fought over Schleswig and Holstein, two duchies ruled by the kings of Denmark. Holstein was German and a member of the German Confederation; Schleswig was Danish in the north and German in the south. Danish and German nationalists each wanted Schleswig for their own nation, and the quarrel had already led to a war in 1848 to 1850, which the great powers ended with the London Protocol of 1852.4
In 1863 the Danish government moved to loosen the ties with Holstein and bind Schleswig more closely to the kingdom, and the new king, Christian IX, signed a joint constitution for Denmark and Schleswig. Prussia and Austria answered with force. On 1 February 1864 their troops crossed into Schleswig.5 › The Greatest Battles of the Industrial Age
On land the Danes were badly outmatched. At sea it was the other way round: Prussia had no navy of real weight. As in the war of 1848 to 1850, the Danish navy blockaded the German Baltic ports, and a squadron in the eastern Baltic under Rear Admiral van Dockum was given the task of keeping the Prussian ships at Swinemünde, today Świnoujście in Poland, from interfering in the war in Schleswig.6
The Danish navy formed three squadrons for the blockade, one in the North Sea and two in the Baltic. The western Baltic squadron was to support the army in Schleswig, and the eastern one was set up at the end of February under van Dockum to watch the Prussian ships at Swinemünde.7
The Prussian army wanted the fleet to break through westward toward the Flensburg fjord, where it could support the troops fighting in Schleswig. To get there, the ships at Swinemünde would first have to get past the Danish blockade.8
Armies and commanders
The Prussian squadron at Swinemünde was commanded by Captain Eduard Jachmann from the covered corvette Arcona. With Arcona he had the corvette Nymphe, and a flotilla of gunboats and the paddle steamer Loreley lay in the waters around Rügen.9
The gunboat flotilla based at Stralsund was larger on paper, 18 steam gunboats and four gun yawls by Probst's count, but only a division of six gunboats came out on 17 March, as both Laursen and the Danish report printed by Fontane agree.10
Arcona, the largest Prussian ship, carried 26 guns. The ship of the line Skjold alone mounted 58 heavy guns by Laursen's count and 64 by the Marinehistorisk Tidsskrift's.11
The Danes had far more guns. The two German biographical dictionaries put the Danish superiority at almost three times (the Neue Deutsche Biographie) and more than four times (the older Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie). The Prussians had one real advantage: their corvettes were faster. Gert Laursen of Dansk Militærhistorie doubts that Jachmann himself believed he could win a sea battle against the Danes.12
Van Dockum flew his flag in the screw frigate Sjælland. With him were the corvettes Heimdal and Thor, and the screw ship of the line Skjold had been ordered to join him, though bad weather held her back until the morning of 17 March.13
The commanders' decisions
On 16 March Jachmann went out to look at the blockaders. Probst writes that he found the Danish squadron at anchor northeast of Sassnitz with only three ships, because the frigate Jylland had gone back to Copenhagen with engine damage; Laursen also has him count three, while Fontane, writing from the Prussian side in 1866, says he saw four large warships off Arkona. Either way, Jachmann decided to attack the next day with everything he had. He did not know that Skjold was about to arrive.14
His plan, as Laursen describes it, was to steer straight at the Danes, turn to bring the corvettes' broadsides to bear, and then fall back on Swinemünde, with the gunboats covering the retreat; Fontane says the first division of gunboats was ordered to stay close under the land in support. Laursen doubts that Jachmann expected to win, and Fontane quotes one of his officers: every man burned to measure himself against the enemy, because the navy had never yet proved itself in battle.15
On the Danish side there was no choice to make. The squadron was there to keep the Prussians in port, and van Dockum went out to fight them as soon as they appeared.16
The battle in phases
At half past seven on the morning of 17 March Arcona and Nymphe steamed out of Swinemünde. Loreley and some of the gunboats joined them on the way, but the gunboats played no part in the fight.17
The Danes saw them coming. Skjold had joined the squadron that morning, and van Dockum raised steam and led his ships south in line ahead, with Sjælland in front, to meet the enemy.18
A little before three in the afternoon the two squadrons came within range. After an exchange of broadsides as the lines passed, the Prussians turned away to the south and ran for home at full speed.19
The accounts differ on the details. Laursen has Arcona fire the first shot at 2:50, from so far off that it fell well short, and the lines close to about 1,500 meters; Fontane, from the Prussian side, puts the first shot at about half past two at some 5,000 paces, and the closest range at 2,000 paces. Both describe the two lines passing each other with their broadsides firing.20
Fontane writes that early in the fight Nymphe was hit in the funnel and the steam pipe and had to slow down for a while, and that Loreley was damaged and turned away toward the gunboats inshore, which took no part in the fighting.21
Sjælland, well ahead of the rest, took the worst of it. She came under heavy fire from Arcona on one side and Nymphe on the other, and Danish witnesses remembered men cut down at the guns. Skjold, at the rear of the line, could fire only her bow guns and was never seriously engaged.22
Then Sjælland herself slowed. Laursen writes that van Dockum reduced speed to let Skjold come up behind the frigate; Fontane believed that the Prussian rifled guns had damaged her engine. Whatever the reason, it gave the Prussians a lead that the Danes could never make up.23
Two Danish sailors left memories of the fight. Christian Nielsen of Sjælland recalled a ball that took the heads off two men, and the admiral making a speech to the crew afterward; H. Jensen, a 16-year-old gun captain on the same ship, remembered a shell bursting on his gun and killing two of its crew.24
Turning point
The battle was decided by speed. For about two hours the fight went on as a chase, with the Danish bow guns firing at the Prussian sterns and the Prussian stern guns answering. The faster Prussian corvettes slowly drew away, and the Danes could not close the gap.25
Around a quarter to five the two squadrons were out of effective range of each other, and the firing stopped. At about eight in the evening the Prussian ships were safe again at Swinemünde, and the Danes broke off the pursuit.26
Counting the losses
The losses were light, and no ship was sunk. All the Danish casualties were aboard Sjælland: 3 killed and 19 wounded, in Laursen, in the Danish report that Fontane prints, and in both articles of the Marinehistorisk Tidsskrift.27
The Prussian figures vary. Dansk Militærhistorie gives 6 killed and 6 wounded, and the two Marinehistorisk Tidsskrift articles 5 killed and 8 wounded. Fontane, writing in 1866 from Prussian reports, counts 6 dead and 7 wounded: three men killed in Arcona's battery by a single shell, two dead aboard Nymphe and a pilot of Loreley who died of his wounds.28
None of the ships was badly damaged. Laursen writes that every ship had been hit several times, but none seriously, and Døwel notes that Skjold suffered only some damage to her rigging and a few splinter marks.29
Aftermath
The Danish squadron anchored to repair its hulls and rigging, and the corvette Heimdal carried the dead and wounded to Copenhagen.30
In Prussia the sortie was rewarded all the same: King Wilhelm I promoted Jachmann to rear admiral the next day.31
Ten days later the whole Danish squadron stood in toward Swinemünde, and the corvette Heimdal went ahead under a flag of truce to deliver the formal notice of the blockade on land. The attempt failed, and she turned back with the letters undelivered.32
The two navies exchanged fire again in April, but only at long range. Døwel records two such encounters for Skjold, in which neither side hit the other; Fontane describes sorties by the fast Prussian aviso Grille on 14 and 24 April, which he says scored several hits while staying out of the Danes' reach.33
But the blockade held. The Prussian ships at Swinemünde did not try again, and the Danish navy kept command of the sea in the Baltic for the rest of the war.34
The war was decided on land. The Prussians stormed the Danish lines at Dybbøl on 18 April, and by the Peace of Vienna in October 1864 Christian IX ceded Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia and Austria.35 › The Greatest Naval Battles in History
Legacy and memory
The more serious naval threat to Denmark came from Austria. Two months after Jasmund an Austrian squadron met the Danes under Edouard Suenson off Heligoland, in the North Sea.36
Historians weigh Jasmund differently. House Divided at Dickinson College calls it a tactical defeat for Prussia, since the Danes easily held the blockade. The Dansk Biografisk Leksikon notes that the Prussian ships escaped only by their superior speed and did not venture out again during the war, and Laursen sees in it the end of the Prussian Baltic squadron's part in the war.37
For Prussia, though, it was the navy's baptism of fire, its first battle at sea, and the officer who led it was rewarded at once. The frontier that the war left behind lasted until 1920, when a plebiscite returned the northern part of Schleswig to Denmark.38
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Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; John Osborne, “In the Battle of Jasmund, the Prussian Navy fails in an effort to break the Danish blockade of Prussia”; Th. Topsøe-Jensen, “C. van Dockum”. ↩
- danmarkshistorien.dk, “Krigen i 1864”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; John Osborne, “In the Battle of Jasmund, the Prussian Navy fails in an effort to break the Danish blockade of Prussia”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Th. Topsøe-Jensen, “C. van Dockum”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Stefan Pajung and Ole Louis Frantzen, “De slesvigske krige”; danmarkshistorien.dk, “Krigen i 1864”. ↩
- Stefan Pajung and Ole Louis Frantzen, “De slesvigske krige”; danmarkshistorien.dk, “Krigen i 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- danmarkshistorien.dk, “Krigen i 1864”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”; Th. Topsøe-Jensen, “C. van Dockum”. ↩
- Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Deutsche Biographie, “Jachmann, Eduard von”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”. ↩
- Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Deutsche Biographie, “Jachmann, Eduard von”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”. ↩
- Th. Topsøe-Jensen, “C. van Dockum”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Deutsche Biographie, “Jachmann, Eduard von”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”; Th. Topsøe-Jensen, “C. van Dockum”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Danish General Staff, Den dansk-tydske Krig 1864; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Deutsche Biographie, “Jachmann, Eduard von”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”. ↩
- Danish General Staff, Den dansk-tydske Krig 1864; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”; Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”; Th. Topsøe-Jensen, “C. van Dockum”. ↩
- danmarkshistorien.dk, “Krigen i 1864”; Stefan Pajung and Ole Louis Frantzen, “De slesvigske krige”; Danish General Staff, Den dansk-tydske Krig 1864. ↩
- Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”; Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold”. ↩
- John Osborne, “In the Battle of Jasmund, the Prussian Navy fails in an effort to break the Danish blockade of Prussia”; Th. Topsøe-Jensen, “C. van Dockum”; Gert Laursen, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864”. ↩
- John Osborne, “In the Battle of Jasmund, the Prussian Navy fails in an effort to break the Danish blockade of Prussia”; Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”; Deutsche Biographie, “Jachmann, Eduard von”; Stefan Pajung and Ole Louis Frantzen, “De slesvigske krige”; danmarkshistorien.dk, “Krigen i 1864”. ↩
Sources
- Gert Laursen, Dansk Militærhistorie, “Søkampen ved Rügen 1864” (in Danish)
- Niels M. Probst, “Træfningen ved Rügen den 17. marts 1864 og Orlogsmuseets maleri”, Marinehistorisk Tidsskrift 37, no. 1 (2004), pp. 25 to 27 (in Danish)
- John Osborne, House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, “In the Battle of Jasmund, the Prussian Navy fails in an effort to break the Danish blockade of Prussia”, citing Michael Embree, Bismarck's First War (2007)
- Th. Topsøe-Jensen, Dansk Biografisk Leksikon (lex.dk), “C. van Dockum” (in Danish)
- danmarkshistorien.dk, Aarhus University, “Krigen i 1864” (in Danish)
- Søren Døwel, “Skruelinjeskibet Skjold: historien om Danmarks eneste skruelinjeskib”, Marinehistorisk Tidsskrift 45, no. 1 (February 2012), pp. 3 to 19 (in Danish)
- Stefan Pajung and Ole Louis Frantzen, Lex (Den Store Danske), “De slesvigske krige” (in Danish)
- Deutsche Biographie, “Jachmann, Eduard von”, with the entries of the Neue Deutsche Biographie 10 (1974) and the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 50 (1905) (in German)
- Theodor Fontane, Der schleswig-holsteinsche Krieg im Jahre 1864 (Berlin: Decker, 1866), the chapter on the fight off Rügen, pp. 295 to 302, Internet Archive (in German)
- Danish General Staff (Generalstaben), Den dansk-tydske Krig 1864, part covering the events from the fall of Dybbøl (Copenhagen, 1892), pp. 71 to 72, Internet Archive (in Danish)
