Qualla: Battle of Sandöström https://qualla.com/battle-of-sandostrom en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:39:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/8/n/battle-of-sandostrom-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Sandöström https://qualla.com/battle-of-sandostrom Battle of Sandöström: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-sandostrom/ Photo credit Wanderer602, CC BY-SA 3.0. The attack came at three in the morning on 2 August 1808, in the half-dark that passes for night in a Finnish August. It came at a channel barely worth naming, in the maze of skerries north of the island of Kimito, because by that summer the whole Finnish War had been squeezed into places like this. Sweden's deep-water fleet ruled the open Baltic, and that supremacy had an unglamorous consequence: Russian reinforcements moving west toward Åbo could not use the sea at all. They had to thread the inshore fairways, single file, through water where one well-placed battery could stop an army.

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/8/n/battle-of-sandostrom-wp/ud8n-battle-of-sand-str-m-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Sandöström: One Channel to Cork https://qualla.com/battle-of-sandostrom/ Photo credit Wanderer602, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Swedes had already tried and failed to destroy the Russian coastal squadrons near Åbo — Turku in Finnish — at Rimito Kramp and Bockholmssund. Blocking the reinforcements was the fallback plan, and the archipelago made it look feasible. Rear Admiral Klas Hjelmstjerna sent a de...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/8/n/battle-of-sandostrom-wp/ud8n-battle-of-sand-str-m-one-channel-to-cork.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Sandöström: A Day of Attacks https://qualla.com/battle-of-sandostrom/ Photo credit Wanderer602, CC BY-SA 3.0. What came at him was substantial: a dozen Russian gun sloops, thirty-eight gun yawls, six companies of infantry, and shore artillery brought up to work the flanks — a six-gun battery, a four-gun battery, a pair of field pieces. Jönsson's guns in the middle of the channel proved b...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/8/n/battle-of-sandostrom-wp/ud8n-battle-of-sand-str-m-a-day-of-attacks.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Sandöström: When the Line Broke https://qualla.com/battle-of-sandostrom/ Photo credit Wanderer602, CC BY-SA 3.0. Late in the fighting a heavier Russian push finally split the Swedish formation and forced the sloops into withdrawal. The withdrawal did what withdrawals do. Jönsson's battery, the thing the whole line had existed to protect, was left on its island with Russians closing around i...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/8/n/battle-of-sandostrom-wp/ud8n-battle-of-sand-str-m-when-the-line-broke.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Sandöström: The Man in the Manor House https://qualla.com/battle-of-sandostrom/ Photo credit Wanderer602, CC BY-SA 3.0. The most audacious part of the operation had nothing to do with boats. Colonel Axel af Palén came ashore with 150 men and worked his way unseen to a manor house nearby, where the Russian commander-in-chief in Finland, Friedrich Wilhelm von Buxhoevden, was quartered. Capturing him...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/8/n/battle-of-sandostrom-wp/ud8n-battle-of-sand-str-m-the-man-in-the-manor-house.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of Sandöström: The Price of an Ambiguous Day https://qualla.com/battle-of-sandostrom/ Photo credit Wanderer602, CC BY-SA 3.0. The butcher's bill was heavier for the side that won. Russian losses came to 121 killed and roughly 200 wounded with thirty-five vessels damaged; the Swedes lost 36 killed and 93 wounded with a dozen ships knocked about. One hundred and fifty-seven men died in a strait most of th...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/8/n/battle-of-sandostrom-wp/ud8n-battle-of-sand-str-m-the-price-of-an-ambiguous-day.mp3 0:06 6 full