Battle of Kronstadt
naval battle in 1790
The Battle of Kronstadt (Russian: Красногорское сражение, lit. 'Battle of Krasnaya Gorka') was a naval battle fought in the Gulf of Finland west of Kronstadt on 3–4 June 1790. The Swedish naval forces sought to engage the Kronstadt squadron of Russian fleet and defeat them both to prevent Russian squadrons from joining and also to open the sea route to Kronstadt and Saint Petersburg.
Background
Swedish open sea fleet under Duke Charles of Södermanland had failed to inflict defeat to considerably smaller Russian naval squadron located instead suffering losses in the action at Reval and chose to withdraw to Gogland on 25 May 1790 to wait for further instructions. On 29 May King Gustav III ordered the open sea fleet to sail towards Kronstadt in order to protect the coastal fleets flank. Meanwhile, coastal fleets had managed to maul the Russian coastal units at Frederikshamn making it possible for the coastal fleet to continue towards the eastern Gulf of Finland. Coastal fleet continued towards Vyborg while repeatedly raiding the coast finally reaching Beryozovye Islands on 3 June.
Battle
Swedish open sea fleet was met by the Russian Kronstadt squadron while approaching Kronstadt on 3 June 1790. The engagement between the two roughly equal strength fleets lasted for four hours without success on either side. Swedish coastal fleet sortied ships to support the open sea fleet but by the time they reached the open sea fleet battle had already ended for the day and since the small coastal vessels were unable to keep up with open sea fleet they had to withdraw back to Beryozovye Islands. Several more clashes were fought between the fleets during the day.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Kronstadt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.