On 17 July 1788, early in the Russo-Swedish War, the Swedish battle fleet under Duke Charles of Södermanland met the Russian Baltic Fleet under Admiral Samuel Greig off the island of Hogland in the Gulf of Finland. After an evening of close fighting each side had captured one enemy ship of the line. Swedes and Russians both celebrated a victory, but the Swedish fleet withdrew to Sveaborg and was soon blockaded there, and King Gustav III's hope of threatening St. Petersburg from the sea was gone.
Gustav III's gamble
Russia had been at war with the Ottoman Empire since 1787, and according to the Russian Military Encyclopedia of 1911 to 1915, Admiral Samuel Greig's squadron was being made ready to sail for the Mediterranean when Sweden broke off relations in the summer of 1788. King Gustav III's plan, as the Royal Collection Trust and the Museums of Genoa both summarize it, was to knock out or bottle up the Russian Baltic Fleet while Swedish troops moved against St. Petersburg. The battle fleet, commanded by the king's brother, Duke Charles of Södermanland, entered the Gulf of Finland to seek out the Russians.1
The Mediterranean expedition was canceled, and Greig, a Scot in Russian service since 1764, led the Baltic Fleet out from Kronstadt instead, his crews filled out with recruits who had never been to sea. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia gives the Swedes 15 ships of the line and 8 frigates against 17 Russian ships of the line and 8 frigates. The Swedish numismatist Bror Emil Hildebrand, writing about a medal struck for the battle, lists 15 ships of the line and 5 frigates with some smaller vessels on the Swedish side, and calls the Russian fleet the stronger.2
An evening battle off Hogland
The fleets met on 17 July near Hogland, an island in the eastern Gulf of Finland. Russia still used the Julian calendar, so Russian accounts date the battle 6 July.3
The fighting was at close range and began around five in the afternoon, when the Russian flagship Rostislav and the Swedish flagship opened fire on each other. It ended in an exchange of prizes: according to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia each side lost one ship of the line. The Russian Military Encyclopedia says that Rostislav forced Vice-Admiral Count Wachtmeister's Prins Gustaf to strike her colors at about ten in the evening, while the Russian Vladislav, cut off at the rear of the line and drifting among the Swedish ships, had to surrender. The Swedish Maritime Museum records the Vladislav as a 74-gun ship built at Arkhangelsk and launched in 1784; she served under the Swedish flag until 1819, and the museum still holds a flag found on board.4
Losses are given very differently. The Russian Military Encyclopedia counts 580 Russians killed, 720 wounded and 470 captured with the Vladislav, and quotes the Swedes' own published figures, which it marks as doubtful, of 130 killed and 334 wounded, plus 539 men captured with the Prins Gustaf. The Museums of Genoa give about 600 Russian dead against 200 to 300 Swedish.5
Two victories, one result
Both sides claimed the day. Hildebrand's text for the Swedish medal calls it a complete Swedish victory. The Encyclopedia of St. Petersburg and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia credit Greig with the win. The Russian Military Encyclopedia is more careful: tactically, it says, the battle cannot be called a victory, but strategically it undoubtedly was one, because Gustav III's whole plan collapsed. The Royal Collection Trust calls the result inconclusive.6
What happened next settled the argument. On the morning after the battle the Swedish fleet sailed for the fortress of Sveaborg outside Helsinki, where the Russian fleet soon blockaded it. The Museums of Genoa likewise judge the Russians strategically successful. The blockade had a further cost: the Swedish Maritime Museum records that the ship of the line Kronprins Gustaf Adolf, which had fought at Hogland, ran aground off Sveaborg and was captured by a Russian squadron on 6 August, her crew taken prisoner and the ship set on fire.7
Greig did not see the end of the campaign. He died on board his flagship Rostislav at Reval, now Tallinn, on 26 October 1788, or 15 October in the Russian calendar. The war dragged on until 1790 and ended without major changes to the map.8
