HSwMS Berserk

HSwMS Berserk was one of seven Hildur-class monitors monitors built for the Swedish Navy in the mid-1870s. The ship had an uneventful career and was sold in 1919 for conversion into a fuel oil barge.

Design and description
The Hildur-class monitors were designed for the defense of Lake Mälaren and the Stockholm archipelago. The ships were 39.78 m long overall and had a beam of 8.72 m. They had a draft of 2.7 m and displaced 460 t. Berserk's crew numbered 48 officers and men. The ship had rudders at bow and stern.

Berserk had a pair of two-cylinder horizontal-return connecting-rod steam engines, each driving a single propeller using steam from two cylindrical boilers. The engines produced a total of 155 ihp which gave the monitors a maximum speed of 8 kn. Hildurs carried 23 - 25 t of coal.

The monitors were equipped with one 240 mm M/69 rifled breech loader, mounted in a long, fixed, oval-shaped gun turret. They were rearmed with a 120 mm quick-firing gun as well as three 57 mm quick-firing guns sometime in the 1890s or the early 1900s.

The Hildur class had a complete waterline armor belt of wrought iron that was 76 mm thick with a 19 mm deck. The face of the gun turret was protected by 418 mm of armor, while its sides were 356 mm thick. The conning tower protruded from the top of the turret and was protected by 254 mm of armor.

Construction and service
Berserk was launched in 1875 by Motala Verkstad at Norrköping. She was sold in 1919 and converted into an oil barge.