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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger. 

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Warship Wednesday 10 June 2026: One Tough Trolle

Above we see the class-leading Danish kystforsvarsskibet Herluf Trolle some 120 years ago this month at the coronation of Prince Carl of Denmark and his wife as King Haakon VII and Queen Maud of Norway on 22 June 1906 in Trondheim, Norway.

A ship of peace, Herluf Trolle had a long, quiet career, save for some tense wartime service, but is nonetheless a fascinating subject.

The Trolles

In the 1890s, Denmark was in need of a new, modern navy with steel hulls, steam propulsion, torpedoes, and breechloading weapons.

The country’s prototype “bathtub battleship,” Skjold (Shield), was ordered in 1893. A 2,200-ton ship, she was stubby at 227 feet overall and drew 14 feet under her steel hull.

Using a three-stroke engine with water-tube boilers, which were quick to fire, and with her single 9.4″/40 main gun’s rotation and ammunition supply handled by electric motors (which, for the time, was revolutionary), Skjold was modern and capable of 13 knots when summoned. Further, with up to 11 inches of armor, she could take a beating.

The Danes then moved forward with a three-pack of improved coastal battleships with the lessons learned from Skjold, with emphasis on more guns and better speed, coupled with the ability to remain in the shallows.

What resulted was the Trolle class, which was nearly half again as heavy as Skjold (3,750 tons), not to mention over 50 feet longer (283 feet oal), yet could still float and fight in 16 feet of water.

They were designed to carry two main guns very similar to those of the larger (328-foot, 7,000-ton) Chilean battleship Capitan Prat, which was built in France at FCM in 1889-91.

While Prat had four 9.4″/35 Canet guns, Trolle would carry two improved 9.4″/38 L/40 Canets dubbed M/96 models in Danish service. These had a better rate of fire (1.3 rounds per minute) than the guns mounted on Skjold (one round every two minutes) and, of course, there were two of them. Plus, the Canets were good out to 11,500m while Skold’s gun had a maximum range of 9,800 even with its slightly longer barrel.

Her secondary battery was four 5.9-inch Bofors PK L/43 M/96s mounted on a gun deck protected by a central casemate. A tertiary battery was intended for defense against boats, including ten 57mm/40 M.1885s and eight 37mm/20 M.1885 Hotchkiss guns. To help spot those incoming TBs, she carried two 30-inch and two 35-inch electric searchlights.

Finally, a torpedo battery of one bow and two abeam below the waterline 18-inch tubes was installed in three different compartments.

Also like Prat, Trolle would use an armor belt and scheme of Creusot steel, just not as much (the Prat had a nearly 12-inch belt). The Dane’s scheme included a 2-inch deck, a belt that was 7 inches amidships tapering to four at the stern, 6 inches over the casemates, and 7 solid inches in the barbettes, bulkheads, and main gun houses. The conning tower ran 7.5 inches.

When it came to propulsion, Trolle was designed with two Burmeister & Wain vertical triple expansion engines and six Thornycroft boilers arranged in a central room turning twin shafts. At 4,200 shp, she was good for 15.5 knots and carried enough coal (245 tons) to cruise 2,400nm at 9 knots, not long enough legs for cross-ocean service, but she was designed to fight in and around the North and Baltic Seas, just over the horizon from home.

Jane’s 1904:

The three ships of the class were all incrementally different and upgraded from one another.

Among the changes were that Trolle’s immediate sister, Olfert Fischer, had Krupp cemented nickel steel armor of the same scheme rather than Creusot plate, had slightly better Bofors M/03 model 9.4″/42s and Bofors M/01 5.9″/42s. This was a big deal as the Bofors 9.4s had a better rate of fire (1.8 rounds per minute versus 1.3 on Trolle’s Canet guns) and a longer range (13,700m vs 11,500m). Fischer was also fitted out as an admiral’s flagship, with extra cabins.

Meanwhile, the third member of the class, Peder Skram, carried better engines of 5,400 shp, which were needed as she went some 200 tons heavier on a slightly longer and wider hull. Like Olfert Fischer, she had Krupp armor of the same (general) scheme and, again, even a better mark of Bofors M/06 9.4″/43 and Bofors M/06 5.9″/50s, while carrying 10 3-inch guns from the start instead of the 57mm 6-pounders.

Jane’s 1921 entry for the class, showing the differences between the three half-sisters.

Which sets the stage for us to…

Meet Herluf

Our little battlewagon carried the name of one of the Danish Navy’s biggest heroes, the 16th-century Admiral Herluf Trolle. He bested a larger Swedish fleet under Jakob Bagge at Öland in 1564, wrecking the massive 173-gun Swedish flagship Mars and capturing Bagge. He took on a second Swedish fleet at Bukow in 1565 and, gravely wounded, returned home to his wife and school only to pass away there 17 days later at age 49.

Our subject was laid down at Orlogsværftet, København, the yard which built the entire class, on 20 June 1897.

Launched 1 September 1899, Herluf Trolle entered the fleet on 7 June 1901, some 125 years ago this week, and was on her trials through 20 July.

Looking at the launching and completion dates of her sisters, it would seem they followed on the same graving dock, with Olfert Fischer joining Trolle in May 1905 and Peder Skram in September 1908. The fact that each subsequent ship was laid down after trials of her previous sister makes the numerous small changes from ship to ship logical.

The most powerful Danish warship when commissioned, Herluf Trolle was a showboat at the time and undertook two long, independent summer cruises (14 June 14- 4 October 1902 and 2 June- 30 September 1904), waving the flag in the Baltic and Western Europe.

The former included attending the fleet review at Spithead on the occasion of King Edward VII’s Coronation.

A 1905 refit, after her sister Olfert Fischer arrived in the fleet, saw Herluf Trolle bolster her armament with six 47mm/40 M.1885 3-pounders.

As noted in the opening of the post, the summer of 1906 saw her in the Royal Division in Norway for the coronation of one of Denmark’s princes as the Scandinavian country’s new king.

The next seven years saw Trolle alternate her summers with a series of exercises and maneuvers with the fleet’s main squadron (1.Eskadren), then settle into a winter nap period.

Around 1909, Trolle and her sisters switched to a more 20th-century battle gray (kampgra) scheme.

A subsequent 1910 refit saw her land her troublesome new 3-pounders in exchange for a couple more 57mm 6-pounders.

War!

On 1 August 1914, with Germany, France, and Russia joining the Balkan sideshow that had been brewing against Austro-Hungary and Serbia/Montenegro, Denmark moved to a robust war footing, the concept of a strong neutrality appealing to the government.

The Navy participated in this Security Force (Sikringsstyrken) with the traditional single fleet squadron splitting into two, with the 1st Squadron guarding Øresund and the 2nd Squadron in the Great Belt. The squadrons were made up of the Trolles along with Denmark’s handful of light cruisers and assorted torpedo boat flotillas. 

Trolle and her sisters were building blocks and flagships in the Sikringsstyrken for the next half decade, Denmark only demobilizing on 28 February 1919.

Back to peace

Following the war and the inevitable peacetime budget cuts by increasingly liberal Danish governments, Herluf Trolle was relegated to reserve status in 1922, while her sister Olfert Fischer was used as a training ship, even carrying an HM-1 seaplane (Danish-built Hansa-Brandenberg W.29) for a period.

Trolle was retained as a pier-side training ship for officer candidates until paid off in 1930, then later sold for scrap.

Her place in the fleet had been taken by the new artillery training cruiser Niels Juel, which had entered service in 1923.

Fischer ended her career as a target ship for naval aviation, clad in extra coats of wood planks over her decks, and able to steam at 9 knots with a skeleton crew. A purported 389 practice bombs would rain down on her decks. Eventually, she was decommissioned in 1936 and discarded.

The final member of the class, Peder Skram, was used in the 1930s as an accommodation ship for the Apprentice School and in various other training tasks until WWII brought her back to the good graces. Rather than be surrendered to the Germans, she was scuttled by her crew at Holmen in August 1943, salvaged by the Kriegsmarine and commissioned as the gunboat Addler, then was sunk a second time in Friedrichsort by Allied aircraft, raised, and then later scrapped by 1949.

Lived on in Coastal Artillery

Continuing to serve, Herluf Trolle’s main guns were sent to form a battery protecting the naval station at Holmen, while her four 5.9-inch guns were sent to Kongelundsfortet, on the southern end of the Copenhagen Fortress.

Emplaced in 1939, the Germans came along in 1940 and moved the 150s to the Sjællands Odde (Gniben reef) to control the submarine barrier in the Kattegat in 1943. Utilized by the Germans during the War and returned to the Danes immediately after, the guns were scrapped in the 1950s, although Artilleriskolen Sjællands Odde endures as a training ground for roughly 200 naval gunners per year. Meanwhile, Kongelundsfortet is preserved as a park and nature trail. 

At least some of Trolle’s guns, likely drawn from her myriad of small 75mm, 57mm, 47mm, or 37mm counter-boat/AAA batteries, are in the extensive collection of the Royal Armory of the Danish War Museum (Krigsmuseet) in Copenhagen, albeit not on display.

Epilogue

Our subject these days is best remembered in period paintings and postcards.

A beloved naval hero, Herluf Trolle’s name endures.

At least one large naval barracks in Denmark carries the name.

One of the companies of the detested German-raised Schalburg Corps (Schalburgkorpset) of Danish SS volunteers was named after Herluf Trolle and had the cuff band to show for it.

The Royal Danish Navy recycled the name for a circa 1967 Peder Skram-class frigate (F 353) that served 20 years on active duty and a few more in the reserve before she was scrapped in 1995.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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