HSwMS Magne (1905)

HSwMS Magne was a torpedo boat destroyer of the Royal Swedish Navy. Magne was built by the British shipbuilder Thornycroft, launching in 1905. She was employed on neutrality patrol and escort duties during the First World War and was sold for scrap in 1943.

Design
In 1904, the Swedish Parliament authorised the Swedish Navy Board to purchase a second torpedo boat destroyer, as a follow-on to HSWMS Mode (1), which had been built by the British shipyard Yarrow in 1902. The new destroyer, to be called Magne, and based on Thornycroft's Shirakumo-class destroyer built for Japan, was ordered from Yarrow's British rival Thornycroft in July 1904, for a price of £50,000.

Magne was 65.78 m long at the waterline, with a beam of 6.30 m and a draught of 2.49 m. Displacement was 430 LT full load. Like Mode, Magne had a turtleback forecastle, although Magne's turtleback was longer, and four funnels. Four coal-fed Thornycroft-Schutz water-tube boilers supplied steam at 240 psi to 2 triple expansion steam engines, rated at 7200 ihp, that drove two shafts. Contract speed was 30.5 kn at full load. Armament consisted of six 57 mm QF guns, with two 450 mm (17.7-inch) torpedo tubes mounted aft. Crew was 67 officers and ratings.

Construction and service
Magne was built by Thornycroft at their Chiswick, London yard, as yard number 378, and was launched on 2 August 1905. She reached a speed of 30.713 kn during acceptance sea trials, before delivery to Sweden to have her armament fitted. She proved to have better seakeeping than Mode, being much drier, although like Mode made no more than 29 kn in Swedish service. Magne formed the basis of the design for Sweden's next four destroyers, HSWMS Wale and the three Ragnar-class destroyer), which were built between 1907 and 1909 in Swedish shipyards.

After arming, Magne was deployed with Mode to the West coast of Sweden during the crisis that preceded the dissolution of the Union between Sweden and Norway. During the First World War, Magne was used to patrol neutral Sweden's waters and for escort duties, and in 1916 forced the Russian submarine RUSSIAN SUBMARINE Alligator out of Swedish waters near Gotland.

Magne was laid up at the end of 1918, and was stricken in 1936. She was then used as a target before being sold for scrap in 1943.