This is mostly confirmed by Anderson who gives Captain Lezhnev as commander of a squadron consisting of two ships of 74 and 66 guns, two 38 gun frigates and the 22 gun Merkurii under command of Lieutenant Crown. The last vessel had been acquired from England the year before and might very well have been armed with carronades already then.
With the Russian squadron to windward in the narrow waters of the Christiania (Oslo) fjord, the only remaining option available to the Venus which was cruising alone was to retreat into the fjord and seek refugee in neutral Danish-Norwegain waters.
At seven o'clock in the morning he anchored at 36 fathoms approximately three cables south of Sletterholmen (south of Larkollen) at the Level of Tönsberg.
In an attempt to turn the broadside against the enemy and also to avoid being straddled (doubled) by the enemy, ... the splice jammed in the hawse hole and the attempt had to be abandoned.
The Russian flag Sysoj Velikij positioned herself on the starboard quarter and one of the frigates, probably the Archangel Gavriil, on the other quarter.
When the wind finally failed the Venus, the Russian squadron was able to close the distance to a 1/4 mile which was further reduced by towing (sweeps are not mentioned). The two accounts which describe the capture in detail agree on the brig taking up a position astern of the Venus. A. Fried. Wallman, who records the account of the Norwegian pilots, writes that the two Russian ships took up positions on the starbord side and the two frigates on the port side. Major Hanson reports that the Russian flag took a position on the starboard quarter and a frigate the corresponding position on the port side.
After a fight of little more than two hours the Russians closed and Major Hanson then decided, after having consulted his officers, to surrender to the superior force rather than sacrificing the crew in a hopeless fight.
According to Major Hanson all shots from the Russian ships and frigates passed above the Venus and only a few shots were received from the brig. The only significant damage to the Venus was done to the rigging where a 24 pound shot damaged the fore topmast but left it standing. No one was killed or wounded onboard the Swedish frigate. One of the sources states that there were eight men killed and many wounded on the Russian brig, which also had the main topmast shot down.
When the Russians cut the cable ... the frigate drifted onto a shoal and remained there ...
After this breach of the neutrality of the Danish/Norwegian territorial waters followed intensive diplomatic activities to get the Swedish frigate released from the Russians. When the diplomatic pressure put on Russia did not achieve the required result a Russian ship was cut out from a German port by a Swedish frigate as reparations.
From these accounts of the capture of the Swedish frigate Venus by a squadron of Russian ships and frigates of superior fire power I cannot draw the conclusion that carronades played any significant role. On the contrary it is possible to infer from the reports that if the Russian ships and frigates had not been so close, the Russian brig which already have received heavy punishment could have been sunk by a broadside from the anchored Venus.
At this return from Russian captivity in 1791, Major Hansson was court martialled and sentenced to death. He was particularly critisized for personally having surrendered the flag to Lezjnjev and to have used the Russian boat and not his own. ..., but ... and was dis-honourably discharged out of the navy.
The SSHM (National Maritime Museum in Stockholm) has some captured short bronze guns of a particular Russian type. These are somewhat longer than carronades, but the guns I have seen does not have the large caliber typical for the carronade, ie larger than 24 pounds.
Note that the ten 40-gun frigates of the Bellona-class from 1782 were the first frigates armed with 24 pound guns. Chapman had designed these frigates to have sufficient stiffness to be able fight in the line of battle when conditions forced the ships to close their lower deck gunports.
Updateded 1996-08-30 by Lars Bruzelius
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Copyright © 1996 Lars Bruzelius.