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Text originally published in 1959 under the same title.
Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publishers Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
ADMIRAL THUNDERBOLT:
THE SPECTACULAR CAREER OF PETER WESSEL, NORWAYS GREATEST SEA HERO, WHO IN EIGHT YEARS OF NAVAL WARFARE SAILED, SHOT, AND STORMED HIS WAY FROM SEA CADET TO VICE ADMIRAL
(A.D. 1711 TO 1718)
BY
HANS CHRISTIAN ADAMSON
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Keepers of the Lights
Lands of New World Neighbors
Captain Eddie Rickenbacker
Through Hell and Deep Water
Zoomies, Subs and Zeros
Hellcats of the Sea (with Vice-Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, USN, Ret.)
Empire of the Snakes
Out of Africa (with F. C. Carnochan)
Knights of the Air (with L. J. Maitland)
Exploring Today (with Lincoln Ellsworth)
Sportsmans Game and Fish Cookbooks (with Helen Lyon Adamson)
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
All drawings and pictures are reproduced through the courtesy of Commodore Olav Bergersen, Royal Norwegian Navy (Retired), from his book, Vice Admiral Tordenskiold
Plate I. Sea Cadet Peter Wessel ( ca 1711)
Plate II. Admiral Tordenskjolds Coat of Arms
Plate III. Vice Admiral Peter Tordenskjold ( ca 1719)
Plate IV, Christian Kold, Tordenskjolds Friend and Servant
Plate V. King Frederik IV of Denmark-Norway
Plate VI. Tordenskjolds Notebook with the Norris Portrait
MAPS
Eighteenth-Century Scandinavia Before the Great Northern War
The North Sea Theater of War
The Baltic Theater of War (Eastern End)
The Baltic Theater of War (Western End)
The Battle of Dynekilen (General Diagram)
The Battle of Dynekilen (Situation Chart)
The May 1717 Attack on Gteborg
The Battle of Strmstad (Situation Chart)
The Battle of Marstrand (Situation Chart)
The October 1719 Attack on Gteborg
DEDICATION
To My Best of Friends
Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, USN, Ret.
A Sturdy Mariner to Have Aboard
Be the Weather Fair or Foul
PROLOGUE
There should be enough sea-borne adventure and the roar of booming guns aboard men-o-war under fighting sail in this true story of a runaway boywho became a Vice Admiral in his late twentiesto satisfy the man who dwells in every youth as well as the eternal youth in every man.
Back in 1690when Denmark and Norway were a united kingdom under a single autocratic rulerPeter Wessel was born in Trondheim, Norway. Three short decades later, he was to stand forth as the greatest sea-fighter, produced by a nation of sea-fighters, since the days of the Vikings. He was also to gain enduring worldwide renown as a resourceful improviser of naval strategies and as being lightning-swift in developing tactics that met combat demands of the moment during the Great Northern War.
From the age of twenty-one, when he was given his first command in the Danish-Norwegian Navy, Peter Wessel showed almost super-human aptitude for winning naval battles, thanks to sixth, seventh, and eighth senses that endowed him with superior seamanship and masterful gunnery techniques, plus an instinctive capacity to strike with audacious daring.
A Sea Cadet in 1711 and a Vice Admiral in 1718, young Wessel barged into battle against his Swedish foes wherever he found them, often in direct violation of orders issued by timid souls in the Admiralty. But Frederik IV, King of Denmark-Norway, loved a winner. He gave his youthful fighting cock promotion after promotion, over scores of officers of senior vintage. The result was that Peter had almost as many enemies among officers in the Danish-Norwegian Navy as he had in that of Sweden.
So great were his battle conquests and his services to the nation that Captain Wessel, soon after his twenty-fifth birthday, was given a Patent of Nobility and the name Tordenskjold. Roughly translated, this means (Torden) The Thunderbolt that Strikes and (Skjold) The Shield that Defends. In actions on land and sea, Tordenskjold lifted his nom de guerre to deathless and stratospheric heights.
While this book is based on historical events and peopled by real persons, it is by no means a definitive history. The Great Northern War, which ran from 1709 to 1719, sucked Denmark-Norway, Russia, Poland, and England into conflict against the then mighty Sweden. Its pattern is too complicated for compression into a one-volume book dedicated to pinpointing the career of a single participant. For that matter, the historical facts, folklore, and legends that have been built up over the centuries around Vice Admiral Peter Tordenskjold are so voluminous that, in themselves, they could cover quite a spread of bookshelf! The problem has not been what to put into this book, but what to leave out and still do justice to its subject.
Another reason why this is not a definitive history is because the black and white of precise historical delineation would fall far short of conveying a lifelike image of Admiral Thunderbolt to the reader. Therefore, I have attempted to recreate the Peter Wessel story in the form of a narrative biographya vehicle intended to transport the reader to the early decades of the 18 th century when Peter, Dame Fortunes favorite, played his spectacular, dramatic, and vividly colorful roles on the aquatic stages of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea in the Great Northern War.
My personal acquaintance with the Peter Tordenskjold of fact and legend dates back to my boyhood days in my native Denmark. For more years than I like to remember, the idea of introducing this valiant son of the Vikings to the English-reading public lay more or less dormant in my mind. Peter stands as his countrys counterpart of Admiral Lord Nelson and a salt-water brother of Jean Bart, the naval hero of France whose deeds earned him the title Admiral of the North Sea.
Oddly enough, the format for the presentation of the Admiral Thunderbolt story was crystallized on a rubber raft adrift in the South Pacific. In order to free my mind from the anxieties and the boredom that arose during twenty-four days of drifting, after our U.S. Army Air Force bomber was ditched and we, the survivors, were talked out, I began to concentrate on Tordenskjold and outlined, as I remembered it, his career in my mind. It was an interesting piece of backtracking. However, I did not resent the interruption when Eddie Rickenbacker, Johnny Bartek, and I were discovered and rescued by a Navy plane piloted by Lieutenant Bill Eadie. That was in November, 1942.
