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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 22 April 2026: The Morning Star

Above, we see the small protected (krydseren) Gejser (also variously known as Gisjer and Geyser) of the Royal Danish Navy in Copenhagen, with the historic St. Alban’s Church in the background.

The class leader of a new series of modern warships under the Dannebrog, she joined the fleet’s 1st Squadron (I Eskadre) some 130 years ago this month and would go on to perform a solid 30 years of enjoyable, even picturesque, service, punctuated by a moment of horror.

Danish cruisers

The first warship rated as a “cruiser” in Danish service was the 2,663-ton ram-bowed iron-hulled sail-rigged steam schooner cruiser (skonnert-krydseren) Fyen, which commissioned in 1884. She carried an impressive 16 5.9-inch Krupp guns (two 149/32 RK L/35 C/80s and 14 shorter 149/22 RK L/25 C/78s), along with two 356mm bow torpedo tubes, protected by 39mm of armor plate. Capable of 12.5 knots, she was swathed in a 1.5-inch armored steel deck.

Then came a quartet of old (built 1862-78) armored screw schooners/sloops: St. Thomas (1,550 tons) Dagmar (1,200 tons), Ingolf (1,019 tons) and Absalon (533 tons) which were modernized in 1885-88 with new powerplants and a main battery of 4.7″/27 RK L/30 C/84 Krupp guns, backed up by 87mm and 37mm QF guns, to be reclassed as 3rd rate cruisers (krydstogtskib 3. klasse), to remain in service as such for a decade.

Then came the British-built 3,000-ton krydserkorvet (cruiser corvette) Valkyrien, a close cousin of the Armstrong-built Chilean protected cruiser Esmeralda. Entering service in 1890, she cruised the world and waved the Dannebrog as far away as Siam and Hong Kong, and is most notable for overseeing the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) to the U.S. in 1917.

This brings us to the 1,322-ton Helka, which would be the first of three planned protected cruisers to replace the old, converted 3rd rates, which were nothing but a stopgap for new construction. Laid down as Yard No. 70 on 9 April 1889, at the Royal Dockyard Copenhagen (Orlogsværftet, København), Hekla had a sloping (1.75-inch to 1-inch) “turtle back” armor deck right, fore, and aft, protecting engines, magazines, steering engines, and shell hoists. Meanwhile, her open gun mounts were all protected by shields.

As noted in 1889’s (London) Engineer [notes mine].

The upper deck is clear fore and aft, leaving ample scope for firing the two 6-inch [149/32 RK C/88 Krupp Schnelladekanone Länge 35] guns, one of which is placed at each end of the ship. Amidships are four [57/40 M.1885] rapid firing guns and two torpedo [381mm] launching tubes. Above the deck houses are six machine guns [37mm M.1875 Hotchkiss 1-pounder Gatling types]. The bridge and a conning tower constructed of nickel steel armor plate are forward. A powerful electric search light is placed on the top of the conning tower and another at the stern of the ship. The Hekla is 225 feet long, her breadth being 33 feet, and of light draught. The engines have been supplied by the Burmeister and Wain Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Copenhagen.

Before she was even fully outfitted and commissioned, the guns on the old third-rate cruisers were evaluated on the new Hekla.

Proven satisfactory in terms of arms and armor, Hekla’s 8-pack of coal-fed locomotive boilers and twin VTEs generated 3,000 shp on twin screws, which was good for 16 knots. Her bunkers could hold 113 tons of coal, which was enough for 1,700nm at 10 knots.

The Danes thought they could tweak that powerplant to do better.

Meet Gejser

Named for the turbulent steam and water discharge common to Iceland (then a Danish territory), Gejser was based on Hekla and nearly identical above water save for the fact that she had a single funnel rather than Hekla’s twin pipe arrangement.

Ordered from Burmeister & Wain, the future Gejser launched on a beautiful summer day on 5 July 1892 with HM King Christian IX in attendance.

As completed, Gejser had roughly the same armament scheme as Hekla save smaller main guns (4.7″/38 QF L/40 C/92s) rather than Hekla’s 5.9s, while retaining the same four 3.45″/37 SK L/40 secondary guns, six 37mm Hotchkiss 1-pdr machine guns, and four torpedo tubes (one 450mm bow, two 381mm beam, one 381 over the stern).

She also had two 35-inch searchlights (Spejlprojektører) and two 8mm machine guns. It should be noted that, while our cruiser had smaller main guns than Hekla, Gejser’s guns could fire more than five rounds per minute compared to one round in Hekla, to a range of 9.2 km compared to 8 km for Hekla’s guns.

Gejser had more significant changes from her half-sister when looking below deck, which included the first installation in an armored ship (not a torpedo boat) of eight Thornycroft water tube style boilers (instead of the locomotive boilers on Hekla), which enabled a combined SHP of 3,157 on her full power trial and a speed of 17.1 knots. Further, the smaller (and faster to heat) boilers and other minor changes shaved some 80 tons off Gejser’s displacement when compared to Hekla, even while allowing a gently strengthened armor scheme because of lessons learned from the latter’s 1891 trials.

Via the December 1892 edition of the Engineer (London):

The Danes liked the new Thornycroft boilers so well that they used them on the new “bathtub battleship” armored coastal defense ship Skjold, which was 2,160 tons and mounted 9.4-inch SK L/40 Krupp guns and had up to 10 inches of armor.

The Danes also ordered a near carbon-copy of Gejser, the single-funneled Orlogsværftet-built cruiser Hejmdal (Heimdall), which launched in August 1894 and commissioned in 1895. Meanwhile, Hekla had her boilers upgraded to the new standard in a later refit.

Quiet Peacetime service

Delivered on 8 May 1893, Gejser spent her first few years in the fleet in a series of extended tests, trials, and showboating, later steaming that fall on a Baltic cruise with the coastwise battlewagon Iver Hvitfeldt, the cruiser Valkyrien, and four torpedo boats.

Then came a series of shipyard availabilities in 1894, followed by a mission to neighboring German waters in the summer of 1895 with her sister Hekla, and the torpedo boats Narhvalen, Støren, Søløven, and Havhesten to represent Denmark at the opening of the Kiel Canal. Seventy-six warships totaling 380,000 tons from 15 different nations anchored in the roadstead for this historic event.

The Danish ships were positioned in the international naval parade ahead of the German cruisers SMS Kaiserin Augusta and Gefion and behind the American USS Marblehead (Cruiser No. 11) and New York (Armored Cruiser No. 2), anchored just off the German Marine Akademie.

Fully operational, Gejser joined the 1st Squadron in 1896 and remained in the fleet’s first line until 1903. One of her skippers during this period was Prince Valdemar, a career naval officer who just happened to be the last son of King Christian IX of Denmark and brother to King George I of Greece and Frederick VIII of Denmark.

She was then tasked as a training ship (Øvelsesskib), home to the gunnery and torpedo school.

She would continue in this role, clocking in for regular Squadron exercises each fall, until November 1905, when she was used, along with the bruising coastal battleship Olfert Fischer, to escort the royal yacht (kongeskibet) Dannebrog to Oslo, the latter taking Prince Carl of Denmark to become the king of newly independent Norway upon the dissolution of that country’s near century-long union with Sweden.

After spending most of 1906 in refit (she had 10 years of squadron service behind her), Gejser shipped out with the Royal Division (Kongedelingen) alongside the Danish EAC steamer Birma (ex-Arundel Castle) to carry King Frederick VIII and the members of the Danish Parliament to the Faroe Islands and Iceland in the summer of 1907.

Gejser then returned to service as the training ship for the Artillery and Torpedo School (Artilleri- og Torpedoskolen), a stint interrupted by escorting Frederik on his visit to relatives in Russia (the Tsar was his first cousin) in the summer of 1909, with the Danish royal family gathering at the Tsar’s palace at Peterhof.

During a circa 1910 refit, both Gejser and Hejmdal landed their half-dozen 37mm Hotchkiss guns in exchange for a quartet of more modern 57mm 6-pounder M.1885 Hotchkiss high-angle anti-aircraft (antiluftskytskanoner) guns. Meanwhile, older half-sister Hekla was transferred to the reserve and disarmed. Hekla was converted into a depot and logistics ship by 1913. Hejmdal returned to service as a cadet training vessel.

In ordinary from 1 October 1912 to 7 January 1914, Gejser was brought back into active service for use as a submarine tender, leaving the Valkyrien as the Danish Navy’s only active cruiser.

At the time, the Danish fleet had nine submarines: eight Whitehead (Fiume) diesel-electric types of 129 feet/200 tons and the older gasoline-engined Fiat-built 114-foot/130-ton Dykkeren.

War!

When the lights went out across Europe in August 1914, the Danish navy counted some 4,000 officers, men, and cadets. They protected not only the country’s coastline and overseas possessions (Iceland, Greenland, Faroes, West Indies), but also its merchant fleet, which at the time had some 558 registered steamers (398,323 tons all told) and over 3,400 sailing vessels of all sizes.

At its disposal were five coastal battleships (Peder Skram, Olfert Fischer, Herluf Trolle, Skjold, and Iver Hvitfeldt), three remaining cruisers (Gejser, Hejmdal, and Valkyrien) rushed back to front-line service, 20 assorted torpedo boats, the nine small submarines detailed above, and a handful of mine ships, gunboats, and “fisheries cruisers” (inspetionsskibe), with none of the latter larger than 700 tons.

With that, on 4 August 1914, the fleet was put on a war footing and, as the Security Force (Sikringsstyrken), was divided between the 1st Squadron in the Øresund in the North between Denmark and Sweden and the 2nd Squadron in the Great Belt (Storebælt) to the West between Zealand and Funen.

Gejser spent most of the war alternating between squadrons, with exceptions for a refit (from September to December 1916) and for brief stints as a training ship.

She even carried King Christian X from Copenhagen to Korsør in November 1915.

One of Gejser’s past skippers, CDR Rord Hammer, who commanded her from 1905-09, would lead the delegation carrying the bodies of the men killed aboard HM submarine E.13, which, after being grounded at Søndre Flindt, was fired upon by German torpedo boats on 19 August 1915.

Post-war tragedy

With peace, of a sort, falling over Europe, Gejser was moved back to her regular mission of summer cadet cruises and school ship duties, interspersed with training evolutions.

A ship designed with naval thinking that predated the Spanish-American War, Gejser was well past her prime in the 1920s. Her typical service during this period was in summer exercises and maneuvers (May-July).

The worst day aboard Gejser came on 25 May 1923 when, during a demonstration of a new fog generating apparatus (Taageudviklingsapparater), an explosion occurred.

The device used “the devil’s element,” yellow phosphorus, held in a tank that, when fed via a steam line from the ship’s boilers, would yield great clouds of billowing smoke used to hide the cruiser and its accompanying force. Shown off to an assembled crowd of officers gathered from throughout the fleet, the novel device exploded with a shot like that of a cannon, and Gejser was enveloped in an extremely poisonous and flammable cloud of vaporized phosphorus, glowing like a morning star through the smoke.

No less than 47 men were extremely injured, including her skipper, Capt. Godfred Hansen, the famed second-in-command of Amundsen’s Gjoa expedition through the Northwest Passage in 1903-06.

Most of the commanders of the exercise squadron’s nine torpedo boats and three minelayers were also among the wounded. LCDR Paul C. Rützou, commander of the torpedo boat Delfinen, died at the Garrison Hospital in Vordingborg after an agonizing 16 days. Crown Prince Frederik (later King Frederik IX from 1947), then a junior officer, had only left Gejser moments before returning to his torpedo boat.

Many of the men suffered terrible disfigurement, with Sir Harold Delf Gillies, known as the father of plastic surgery in Britain, traveling to Denmark especially to treat them.

Gejser was repaired and returned to service. Notably, she conducted a series of cadet training cruises around the Baltic and Mediterranean in 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1927. She also functioned as an escort ship in the Royal Division for King Christian X’s trip to the Faroe Islands and Iceland in 1926.

She was removed from the fleet’s list on 28 May 1928 and sold for her value in scrap.

Her sister Hejmdal was likewise disposed of in 1930.

Their collective older half-sister Hekla, hulked in 1915, amazingly was only disposed of in 1955.

Epilogue

Little remains of our cruiser that I can locate, other than an abundance of maritime art.

As Iceland gained sovereignty as a separate kingdom under the Danish crown in 1918, and then moved toward complete independence in 1944, Denmark had little impetus to name another warship after geysers.

When it comes to Gejser’s former skippers, Emmanuel Briand de Crevecoeur (as headmaster of the artillery school in 1923 and then as her commanding officer proper from 1926-27), was a rear admiral holding the tough dual seats of Chief of the Naval Command and Acting Director of the Ministry of the Navy in 1940 after the Germans occupied Denmark, assuming the spots vacated by RADM Hjalmar Rechnitzer, who had resigned in disgrace. Later interned by the Germans, De Crevecoeur retired after liberation in 1945, wrapping up a career that he began as a cadet in 1898. Spending his retirement as a professor of languages at Krogerup College, he passed away in 1968.

Perhaps the best-known of Gejser’s skippers, the polar explorer Hansen, recovered from his wounds and held several further seagoing commands before becoming commandant of the Danish naval academy. He passed in 1937, aged 61, while still a rear admiral on the naval rolls.

However, the legacy of Gejser’s 1923 explosion echoed well into the 1950s.

One of Gejser’s junior officers, 1Lt Kai Hammerich, was so debilitated in the blast that he was under medical treatment in both Denmark and England for several years thereafter. Later transferring to the country’s lighthouse service, he soon became active in the Danish Red Cross and, as head of the organization in 1950, took command of the 356-bed Danish hospital ship MS Jutlandia during the Korean War. Serving for 999 days during the conflict, Jutlandia cared for 4,981 gravely wounded soldiers from 24 different nations, as well as over 6,000 Korean civilians.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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