Hemmema

Hemmema

The hemmema was a type of warship built for the Swedish archipelago fleet and the Russian Baltic Fleet in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was designed by the prolific and innovative Swedish naval architect Fredrik Henrik af Chapman in collaboration with Augustin Ehrensvärd. Between 1764 and 1809, Sweden built six hemmemas.

About Hemmema in brief

Summary HemmemaThe hemmema was a type of warship built for the Swedish archipelago fleet and the Russian Baltic Fleet in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was designed by the prolific and innovative Swedish naval architect Fredrik Henrik af Chapman in collaboration with Augustin Ehrensvärd. Between 1764 and 1809, Sweden built six hemmemas. Hemmema had a deeper draft and was slower under oars, but offered superior accommodation for the crew, carried more stores, was more seaworthy and had roughly ten times as many heavy guns. The later versions, both Swedish and Russian, were much larger and much more heavily armed than Oden. Sweden lost all its territories in the Baltic states and suffered Russian raids in Finland and along the chain of islands and archipelagos stretching from the Gulf of Finland to Stockholm in the Great Northern War of 1741–1743. In 1756, Sweden established the archipelaga fleet with the official arménsium under the command of the army department, the Krigskollegium, with Ehren Svärd as supreme commander. Starting in 1770, it merged with the Finnish Squadron based at Sveaborg, and in 1777, it incorporated the Swedish galley fleet based at Stockholm into the armed Swedish army.

The Swedish fleet’s status as an independent branch of the Swedish army was secured in 1772 by the coup d’tat d’ètat of King Gustav III in the Riksdag in 1769–70 and the coup was called the Hats d’etat. In 1872, the Swedish fleet was incorporated into the Armed Swedish Army, which was based in Stockholm and the capital city of Stockholm, and it became known as the “Hemmema flotta” (hemmema Tavastia) It was the largest and most heavily armed vessel in the arch islands fleet and served in the Russo-Swedish War of1788–90. It could be propelled by either sails or oars but was still smaller and more maneuverable than most sailing warships, which made it suitable for operations in confined waters. In the early 1800s, Sweden began to deploy inshore flotillas of shallow-draft vessels, beginning with smaller versions of the traditional Mediterranean galleys. Most of these new vessels were more akin to galiots and were complemented with gun prams. The Swedes began to use these vessels to defend against Russian naval power.