Battles of the Nineteenth Century, Page 471.

Battle of Copenhagen

            The history of nations has plenty of instances to offer of the very trifling causes by which war may be brought about, but none, perhaps, of such utter insignificance in its import as the incident that was answerable for that great Baltic drama whose central brilliant feature was the Battle of Copenhagen.  There were, of course, political motives at work influencing and urging on the plucky little Scandinavian Power; that mad and brutal Russian monarch the Emperor Paul severely forced the Court of Denmark into an attitude of hostility, from which it would doubtless have far sooner refrained.  But the direct causa belli was as follows: -

             On the 25^th of July 1800, a British squadron, consisting of three frigates, a sloop, and a lugger, fell in with a large Danish forty-gun frigate, the Freya, which was convoying two ships, two brigs, and two galliots.  Denmark was at that period a neutral Power; England was engaged in conflict with every very nearly half of Europe.  Orders had been given for British officers to search the ships of neutral Powers for contraband of war, with which there was reason to suspect our foes were being liberally supplied from these sources.  In the exercise of his undoubted right, Captain Baker, of the twenty-eight gun frigate Nemesis, the senior officer of the little British squadron, hailed the Freya, and stated his intention of sending boats to board the vessels under convoy.  Captain Krabbe, of the Dane, replied with warmth that if any such attempt were made he should unhesitatingly open fire upon the boats.  This attitude could, of course, be productive of but one result; both threats were put into execution, and a general action ensued.  The Freya was overpowered by the superior force against which she had to contend, and was obliged to submit; and the whole of the vessels, including the convoyed ships, made sail for the Downs, where they anchored, the Danish frigate, by command of Admiral Skeffington Lutwidge, keeping her colours flying.  Unhappily, the affair had not passed off without bloodshed.  The British loss was two men killed and several wounded; the Danes likewise had two men killed and five wounded.

            The episode was one to have been easily adjusted by a little political diplomacy, particularly as a tolerably good understanding had previously existed between the two nations.  The British Government despatched Lord Whitworth to Copenhagen to arrange the matter; conference resulted in the agreement that the Freya and her convoy were to be repaired at the cost of the English, and released, and the questions of the right of British naval officers to search neutral ships was to stand over for discussion at a future period.  And here the affair might very well have been allowed to rest.  But Russia, the inherent foe of this country, even more than France, although actually deemed to be an ally of ours, seized the opportunity which the popular bitter feeling, briefly aroused in Denmark, gave to her.  She established an armed neutrality between herself and Sweden, laid an embargo upon all the British ships then lying in her ports; coalesced with Prussia, and, as history has since shown, practically compelled, by secret pressure, the Court of Copenhagen to join in the General northern confederacy against Great Britain.

            This was an alliance in which Denmark was as a puppet in the hands of the Moscovite string pullers.  The hardly Norsemen, whose sympathies must assuredly have been far more with us at heart than with the bullying, hectoring nation which was urging them into unwilling hostility, were destined to bear the whole brunt of the strenuous conflict.  But in those brave days of old the pulse of the British nation beat high, and the spirit of aggressiveness, born of long series of wars, ran strong; the northern Powers had assumed a menacing posture, and with all her traditional swiftness, England was upon the offensive.  On the 12^th of March 1801, there sailed from Yarmouth under the command of that mild old admiral Sir Hyde Parker, a fleet of fifteen, shortly afterwards increased to eighteen, sail-of-the-line, with a large number of frigates, bombs, and other craft.  A terrible disaster, however, weakened the British force at the outset of the voyage.  The invincible, of seventy-four guns, carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Totty, struck upon a shoal called Hammond’s Knoll, where she lay beating for upwards of three hours, and then, gliding off, sank in deep water, taking with her four hundred people.

            As second in command of this expedition went Lord Nelson, with his flag in the St. George, of ninety-eight guns.

            In a letter preserved admits the voluminous correspondence and despatches collected by Sir H.N. Nicholas, nelson thus describes his command: “You cannot think,” he wrote on February 9^th 1801, “how dirty the St. George is.  The Ship is not fitted for a flag.  Her decks leaky, and she is truly uncomfortable; but it suits exactly my present feelings.”  These “feelings,” one deplores to discover, were melancholy, caused by his separation from Lady Hamilton.  Nelson hoisted his flag on February 12^th, but owing to the violence of the weather, he was unable to go on board until seven days later.  A curious anecdote, illustrating the wonderful tactical genius of the great admiral, is narrated. Immediately prior to his departure for Copenhagen, he was visiting a friend of his, one Mr. Davidson.  Speaking of the Baltic expedition he was about to enter upon, Nelson desired a chart of the Cattegat should be procured and brought to him, that he might study it and impress his memory with a knowledge of those waters.  This was done, and in the presence of Mr. Davidson, Nelson studied the chart, musing awhile as he overhung it.  Then, saying he believed the Government would spare only twelve ships-of-the-line, he marked out the situation in which he should dispose them, a prophetic indication which was exactly fulfilled.    

               Meanwhile, in the belief that Denmark, for all her hostile demonstrations, would be willing to enter into negotiations for the preservation of peace, the British Government had despatched the Honourable Nicholas Vansittart to Copenhagen, about a fortnight prior to the departure of the fleet, with full powers to treat.  The issue of his mission was, of course, unknown at the time of the departure of Sir Hyde Parker’s force.  Strong winds prevented the British fleet from making the Naze of Norway before the 18^th of March, and scarcely were they within sight of land when a heavy gale, lasting for two days, scattered the ships in all directions.  One of these, the Blazer, gun-brig, was driven under the Swedish fort of Warberg, ad there captured.

            The fleet having again assembled, on the 23^rd they’re arrived from Copenhagen the Blanche frigate, bringing back Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Drummond, the British charge d’affaires; and the reply of the Danish Government instead of being one tending towards conciliation, was a sheer message of defiance. On the 29^th of March, Lord Nelson struck his flag from the cumbersome and unseaworthy St. George, and hoisted it afresh on board the Elephant, of seventy-four guns.  The gallant spirit had been greatly vexed by Sir Hyde Parker’s procrastination on the arrival of the fleet at Cronenberg, outside of which he proposed to anchor in order to give the British minister time to negotiate at Copenhagen.  “To keep us out of sight,” he writes in a letter to his friend Davidson, “is to seduce Denmark into a war. I hate your pen-and-ink; a fleet of British ships-of-war are the best negotiators in Europe; they always speak to be understood, and generally gain their point; their arguments carry conviction to the hearts of our enemies.”

            In truth, Sir Hyde Parker, though as brave and hearty an admiral as ever hoisted his flag on a British liner, was scarcely fitted to the command of such an expedition as this.  Nelson fretted under the delays, which accompanied every fresh move.  His own theory was always one of instant action.  It was his swiftness, which paralysed the French at the Nile, which characterised his masterly manoeuvring at the Battle of St.Vincent, and which assured the success of his scheme at Trafalgar.  Colonel Stewart, who commanded the troops in the fleet at Copenhagen, and who wrote a very full account of the battle, points out that Nelson’s plan, had he been Commander-in-Chief would have been to start immediately from Yarmouth with such ships as were in readiness, and made straight for the mouth of Copenhagen Harbour, leaving the remainder of the fleet to follow as rapidly as they could contrive.  Such a dashing movement would have rendered it almost impossible on the part of the Danes to provide against the expected attack by preparations, which Sir Hyde Parker’s lingering had enabled them to render formidable.  As a specimen of the dallying which went on: “The pilots,” writes James in his Naval history, “who, not having to share the honours, felt it to their interest to magnify the dangers of the expedition, occasioned a few more days to be dissipated in inactivity.  In the course of these, Admiral Parker sent a flag of truce to the Governor of Elsinore, to inquire if he meant to oppose the passage of the fleet through the Sound.  Governor Stricker replied that the guns of Cronenberg Castle would certainly be fired at any British ships-of-war that approached.”  What other answer could Sir Hyde Parker have anticipated?  One may conceive, and sympathise with, the bitter impatience of Nelson at these protracted delays.  “Time, Twiss, time,” he once remarked to one of his favourite captains, in emphasising the value of instant action.  The Danes themselves did not fail to appreciate, and make full use of long interval, which was granted to them.  Even Lord Nelson himself confessed to being astonished by the commanding and formidable appearance of the enemy’s preparations.  His sketch of the Danish hulks and ships-of-battle certainly exhibits a very powerful array; several towering, two decked hulks, their sides a bristle with the muzzles of cannon, and each equipped with a solitary pole-mast amidships; tall, fully rigged liners, sloops and gun-brigs, with the masts of vessels moored within it showing above the walls.

              Totally ignoring the threat of Governor Stricker, whose answer Sir Hyde Parker must certainly have accepted as an ultimatum, the British fleet, early on the morning of the 30^th, got under way, and with a fine working breeze stood through the Sound in the formation of “line ahead,” Nelson commanding the leading division, Sir Hyde Parker the centre, and Rear-Admiral Graves the rear.  The Elsonore batteries opened fire, but not one of the ships was struck.  Shortly after noon the fleet anchored a little way above the island of Huen, distant about fifteen miles from the Danish capital; and Nelson, accompanied by Admiral Graves, went away in the Lark lugger to reconnoitre the enemy’s defences.  The preparation looked truly very formidable.  Eighteen vessels, comprising full rigged ships and hulk’s, were moored in a line, stretching nearly a mile and a half, flanked to the northward by two artificial islands called the Tekrona, or Trekroner batteries, mounting between them sixty-eight guns of heavy calibre, with furnaces for heating shot, and close alongside of these lay a couple of large two-deckers which had been converted into block-ships.  Across the entrance of the harbour was stretched a massive chain, and batteries had also been thrown up on the northern shore commanding the channel.  Outside of the harbour’s mouth were moored two seventy-four-gun ships, a forty-gun frigate, a couple of brigs, and some xebecs.  To the south of the floating line of hulks and ships, upon Amag Island, several gun and mortar batteries had been erected, so that on the seaward side of it Copenhagen was protected by defences which, from end to end, stretched for nearly four miles.  Added to these artificial defences, additional security was furnished to the enemy by the dangers of the navigation.  The channel, hazardous at all times and best with shoals, and had beaconed with false buoys, for the purpose of decoying our ships to destruction upon the sands.

            Upon these elaborate preparations Lord Nelson gazed, not, we may be sure, with feelings of dismay, but as he himself admits, with astonishment and admiration.  What the Danes thought of the great British admiral is well exemplified by the following anecdote: - When our fleet lay at anchor outside Cronenberg an aide-de-camp of the Prince of Denmark came on board the London.  Whilst seated in the admiral’s cabin writing a note the pen spluttered, and the youthful officer exclaimed to Sir Hyde Parker “if your guns are no better return to England!”  He then inquired who commanded the different ships, and presently coming to the Elephant, Nelson’s name was pronounced.  “What!” exclaimed the aide-de-camp, “is he here?  I would give a hundred pieces to have a sight of him.  Then I suppose, it is to be no joke if he has come!”

            The British fleet having passed into the Sound on the 30^th March, as has already been related, and Lord Nelson being returned from reconnoitring the enemy’s defences, the commander-in-chief on the evening of this same day summoned a council of war.  Sir Hyde Parker was for delaying the attack; Nelson was against losing another moment.  “Give me ten sail-of-the-line, Sir Hyde,” he exclaimed, “and I will undertake to carry the business through in a proper manner.”  

            Knowing the character of his second, Admiral Parker cheerfully accepted Nelson’s offer, and granted him two sail-of-the-line in addition to those for which he asked-that is to say, two fifty-gun ships, which the Danes always reckon as line-of-battle-ships.  The force at the disposal of Lord Nelson consisted of seven ships of seventy-four guns each, three ships of sixty-four guns, one of fifty-four, and one of fifty guns, five frigates, mounting in all one hundred and ten guns, and several sloops, bomb-vessels, fire ships, and gun brigs-a total of thirty-six sail of square rigged vessels.  In all, the British armament numbered seven hundred guns, of which one hundred and fifty-two pieces were carronades.  The Danes, by their own accounts, had six hundred and twenty-eight guns, all heavy pieces, and no carronades.

            With the indomitable energy which characterised all his manoeuvres, Nelson accompanied by Captain Brisbane of the Cruiser, proceeded in a boat, under cover of darkness, on the night of Sir Hyde Parker’s council of war, and explored the channel between the island of Saltholm and the Middle Ground, in order to acquaint himself with the navigation of that dangerous stretch of water.  Foot by foot he groped his way over the darkling current through the biting March air and ice of that bitter Northern clime.  He rebuoyed the channel, and ensured the safety of his ships, so far as the reefs and sandbanks were concerned, whose whereabouts did the Danes treacherously falsify.  “How many admirals,” says Clark Russell in his “Life of Nelson,” then afloat would have undertaken this duty for them?  Most of them, possibly would have applied to such a task Lady Nelson’s theory of boarding, and ‘left it to the captains.’”

             On the 31^st of March Nelson made another examination of the Danish fleet, with the result that he abandoned his original project to attack from the northward, and, the wind being favourable, he resolved to deliver the assault from the southward.  Late on the morning of the 1^st of April the British fleet weighed, leaving Sir Hyde Parker’s division of eight sail-of-the-lines at anchor in the Middle Ground.  Lord Nelson had gone on board the Amazon frigate, in order to take a final view of the enemy’s situation and disposition; and when he returned to the Elephant he ordered the signal to be made for all the vessels under his command to get under way.  It is related that a sight of those colours the seamen of the fleet broke into a hurricane of cheering, which must have been borne to his ears of the Danes afar.  The wind blew a light breeze, though from a favourable quarter, and the ships, in perfect line, led by the Amazon, threaded the smooth water of the narrow channel.  Simultaneously with the weighing of Nelson’s division the commander-in-chief’s squadron of eight ships also lifted their anchors and floated into a berth a little nearer to the mouth of the harbour, where they again brought up.  And here, throughout that famous battle, lay Sir Hyde Parker, a passive spectator of the Titanic conflict, scarcely, perhaps, illustrating Milton’s nobles line- “He also served who only stands and waits.”

                   At dusk Nelson’s column anchored for the night within two miles of the tail of the enemy’s line.  Throughout the hours of darkness the English guard-boats were stealthily creeping hither and thither upon the narrow waters, sounding and testing the buoys.  In one of these boats Captain Hardy, of the St. George-the man in whose arms Nelson died at Trafalgar-actually rowed to within the very shadow of the leading Danish ship and plumbed the water around her with a pole, so as not to be heard.  On board of the Elephant on the eve of the battle Lord Nelson was entertaining most of the captains of his division at dinner.  The hero was in high spirits, and drank to “a leading wind and to the success of the ensuing day.”  Until one o’clock that night he was dictating his orders, and although he retired to his cot, he did not sleep, but every half hour called for reports of the direction of the wind.  At six o’clock he was up and dressed, and at seven caused the signal to be made for all his captains to come on board.

            “The day of the 2^nd of April,” says James, in his precise Naval History, “opened, as the British had hoped it would, with a favourable or north-easterly wind.  The signal for all captains on board the flagship was hoisted almost as soon as it could be seen, and at 8 a.m. the several captains were made acquainted with the several stations assigned to them.  As circumstances prevented the plans being strictly followed, it may suffice to state that all the line-of-battle ships were to anchor by the stern abreast of the different vessels composing the enemy’s line, and for which purpose they had already prepared themselves with cables out of their stern-ports.”  This system of mooring abreast of the enemy when the formation of the fleet permitted it, and engaging ship to ship, was a very favourite manoeuvre of Nelson’s and was brilliantly successful both at Aboukir and Copenhagen.

            The battle began at ten o’clock.  The Edgar, a seventy-four, commanded by Captain Murray, was the first vessel to get into action, and for some while engaged the Danes unsupported.  The block-ship Provesteen opened a heavy fire upon her the moment she came within range; but she held on all in grim silence until abreast of the craft she had been instructed to tackle, and then poured in a terrific broadside.  So narrow was the channel that in bearing down to their respective stations the Bellona and Russell grounded.  The Elephant, whose situation was very nearly amidships of the line, signalled for the two stranded ships to close with the enemy.  As this order was not at once compiled with, Nelson instantly guessed the reason, and with his marvellous promptitude and capacity of swiftly formulating his plans, he changed the intended mode of sailing, and starboarded his helm to provide against a like casualty, trusting to the vessel in his wake to perceive his reason, and follow his example.

            This totally all did, and the rapid manoeuvre of the admiral’s ship undoubtedly saved nearly two-thirds of the fleet from grounding.

            The craft, which Nelson had singled out as his particular opponent, was the flagship of the Danish commander-in-chief, Commodore Fischer.  This was a vessel named the Dannebrog, mounting sixty-two guns and carrying 336 men.  When within a cable’s length (120 fathoms) of her, the Elephant let go her anchor.  Nelson wished to get still closer to his foe, but the pilots were afraid of the shoaling water, and when the lead indicated a depth of a quarter less five, they insisted upon bringing up.  The average distance at which the vessels engaged was 100 fathoms-terribly close quarters for such ordnance as the broadside metal of the liners.  “I hope, “Lord Nelson had written to Sir Edward Berry to anticipating this fight, “we shall get able to get closer to our enemies that our shot cannot miss their object, and that we shall again give our enemies that hailstorm of bullets which is so emphatically described in the Naval Chronicle, and which gives our dear country the dominion of the seats.”

            For three hours the cannonade was sustained by each side with undiminished fury, and then the fire of the Danish block-ships, prams, and rideaus began sensibly to slacken.  Still the contest could not be said to have shown symptoms of taking a decisive turn.  The Russell and Bellona were flying signals of distress, and the Agamemnon, which had also grounded, had hoisted flags indicating her incapacity.  The London laid a long way off and it has been suggested by James that Sir Hyde Parker’s view of the progress of the fight might have been imperfect.  This is more than probable, when we consider the dense clouds of smoke that must have rolled from the broadsides of the contending ships.  The Danes fire was incessant and furious; nothing seemed yet to have been silenced, and the commander-in-chief, viewing the ceaseless spitting flames from every point of the ponderous looming line of defence, began to grow apprehensive for the British vessels, and to fear that the fire was too hot even for Nelson.  The notion of a retreat must have been cruelly mortifying to the fine-spirited old Briton; but his sense of honour was foremost in the motive, which prompted him to fly a signal of recall.  “He was aware,” he said, “of the consequences to his own personal reputation; but it would be cowardly in him to leave Nelson to bear the whole shame of the failure, if shame it should be deemed.”  And so, according to Southey, with all imaginable reluctance, Sir Hyde Parker, at about one o’clock upon that memorable day, hoisted the signal for the action to cease.

                   How Nelson received that order, delivered by the bunting of the London, is one of the immortal episodes of the hero’s career.  During the course of the battle down to this time, the admiral had been pacing the quarterdeck of the Elephant.  He was clad in a blue coat; epaulettes of gold fringe, and a plain, small cocked hat, whilst on his breast were several orders.  Colonel Stewart, who was on board throughout the engagement, says, “he was full of animation, and heroically fine in his observations.”  He had just remarked to the colonial that the fight was a warm one, and that any moment might be the last to either of them, and was adding “But, mark you, I would not be elsewhere for thousands!” when the flag-lieutenant reported the order from the London, and asked whether he should repeat the signal “No,” replied Nelson; “merely acknowledge it.”  He then inquired if signal No. 16 was still flying-that being the order for “Close action.”  The lieutenant answered that it was.  “Mind you keep it so,” said Nelson sternly, but with the stump of his amputated arm working as it was wont to do when the admiral was agitated.  Then turning abruptly to Colonel Stewart: “Do you know,” said he, “what’s shown on board the commander-in-chief, No. 39?”  The colonel inquired the purport of No. 39.  “Why, to leave off action.”  A moment later he burst out; “Leave off action! Now damn me if I do!”  Captain Foley stood near; Nelson turned towards him.  “Foley,” said he, “you know I have only one eye; I have a right to be blind sometimes.”  He levelled his telescope, and applying his blind eye, said; “I really do not see the signal.”  It was therefore merely acknowledged on board the Elephant, and not repeated, whilst on high, clear of the clouds of smoke, continued to stream the signal for “Close action.”

            It is only fair to Sir Hyde Parker, in reference to this signal of recall, to quote the statement of the Rev. Dr. Scott, who was chaplain on board the London.  “It had been arranged,” he affirms in his account of the battle, “between the admirals (Parker and Nelson) that, should it appear that the ships which were engaged were suffering too severely, the signal for retreat should be made, to give Nelson the opportunity of retiring if he thought fit.”

            The frigates and sloops of the British fleet, however, obeyed Sir Hyde Parker’s signal and hauled off.  They were suffering cruelly, and their services were all but worthless.  The gallant Captain Riou in the Amazon, who had been wounded by a splinter in the head, sat upon a carronade encouraging his men.  A volley from the Trekroner batteries killed his clerk and laid low a file of marines.  So close was the frigate, that, in rounding, her stern beam gazed the fort.  Springing up, Riou exclaimed: “What will Nelson think of us?  Come, my boys, let us all die together!”  Scarcely were the words off his lips when a round shot cut his body fairly in half.

             At about half past one the fire of the fire of the Danes began seriously to slacken, and twenty minutes later it had ceased along nearly the whole of the line astern of the hulking Zealand.  The enemy had suffered frightfully: the carnage had been terrific, the destruction enormous.  Several of the lighter vessels had gone adrift owing to their cables having been shot through.  Between the bulwarks the corpses lay strewn knee-deep reinforcements continually coming off from the shore to serve the guns.  Several of the Danish ships had surrendered; but there was much difficulty in taking possession of these prizes, partly on account of the ceaseless fire from the Amag batteries, and partly because of the shot discharged at the boats of the captors by the fresh drafts, who seemed not to heed that the vessels they reinforced had already struck.  Particularly was this the case with the Danish admiral’s ship, the Dannebrog.  She was on fire; her colours had been lowered; the commodore had struck his pennant and left her; and still men from the shore continued to swarm into her, firing at the boats sent by the British to take possession, in all defiance to the right and custom of warfare.  Enraged by this obstinate resistance, Nelson again directed the batteries of the Elephant to open upon her, and another vessel joined in the attack.  When the smoke from the two ships broadside had cleared away, the Dannebrog was perceived to be drifting before the wind, ablaze fore and aft, with her men flinging themselves into the sea.

            At about half-past two, the battle now having taken a decided turn in favour of the British, Lord Nelson sent ashore his aide-de-camp, Sir Frederick Thesiger, with a flag of truce to the Crown Prince and the celebrated letter, hastily written by him upon the rudder-head of his ship and addressed “To the brothers of Englishmen-the Danes.”  In this note he wrote: “Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson had been commanded to spare Denmark when she no longer resists.  The line of defence which covered her shores had struck to the British flag; but, if the firing is continued on the part of Denmark, he must set on fire all the prizes that he has taken, with out having the power of saving the men who have so nobly defended them.  The brave Danes are the brothers, and should never be the enemies, of the English.”

              Whilst Captain Thesiger was gone on shore with this letter, the destructive fire still kept up by the Monarch, Ganges, and Defiance silenced the fire of the Indosforethen, Holstein, and the adjoining ships of the Danish line.  The Defence and Ramilies, from Sir Hyde Parker’s division, which had heretofore been unengaged, were approaching, and things looked black for the Danes.  But the great Trekroner battery, having had nothing but frigates and smaller craft to oppose it, was comparatively uninjured, and sustained a hot, destructive fire.  Fifteen hundred men had been thrown into it from the shore, and it was considered too strong to carry by assault.  It was deemed wise to withdraw the British ships from the dangerous intricate channel whilst the favourable wind gave them an opportunity of getting out, and signals were actually being made to that purpose when the Danish adjutant-general, Lindolm, came out, bearing a flag of truce, at sight of which the Trekroner and Crown batteries ceased fire; and the action, which had lasted for about five hours, during four of which it had been very fiercely contested, was brought to a close.

            The Crown Prince, whom Captain Thesiger found standing in a sally-port, inquired Nelson’s motive in sending a flag of truce.  The reply was: “Lord Nelson’s object in sending on shore a flag of truce is humanity; he, therefore, consents that hostilities shall cease till Lord Nelson can take his prisoners out of the prizes, and he consents to land all the wounded Danes, and to burn or remove his prizes.”  Formidable preparations had been made on board the British ships to provide against the non-acceptance of the terms of the truce.  As Captain Thesiger left Nelson’s ship, 1,500 of the choicest boarders of the fleet entered fifty boats, under the command of Colonel Stewart and Captain Fremantle.  “The moment it should be known,” says Clarke and Mr Arthur’s life of Nelson, “that the flag of truce had been refused, the boats were to have pushed for the batteries, and the fire of every gun in the fleet would have covered their approach.”

             Lindolm, on coming aboard the Elephant with his truce, had been referred to Sir Hyde Parker; and about four o’clock in the afternoon of this eventful day, Nelson himself went on board the London.  His own ship, along with several others of the division, in endeavouring to sail out of the narrow channel, had taken the ground, and remained stranded.  Lord Nelson, it is recorded, was in depressed spirits, notwithstanding his brilliant success.  He appeared to have been shocked by the explosion on board of the Dannebrog and the frightful slaughter of that five hours conflict.  “Well,” was his remark, “I have fought contrary to orders, and may be hanged: never mind, let them,”

            The Elephant floated again at about eight o’clock in the evening; but Nelson, in ignorance of this, remained for the night on board of the St. George.  He returned at dawn on the 3^rd of April, and finding his own ship was afloat, he made a tour of inspection o the prizes that had been taken.  One of the enemy’s ships, the Holstein, a Danish line-of-battle ship, which lay under the guns of the Trekroner batteries, refused to acknowledge herself captured, although in reality she had struck to the British.  Her crew quibbled that they had never hauled down their colours.  Two British captains had been on board to demand her, and both had been refused possession.  Nelson entreated Sir Hyde Parker to send Captain Otway on this mission, and his request was complied with.  As this gallant officer went alongside the Holstein, he ordered his coxswain-a bold, impudent fellow to go into the maintop and bring away the ship’s pennant whilst he himself engaged the commander in conversation.  The man executed this order, and returned to his place in the gig with the colour hidden to his bosom.  Captain Otway’s demand of surrender having been refused, he insisted that a ship, which had struck her colours, must be a prize, and it was agreed to refer the question to the Danish commodore, who was in the arsenal hard by.  The commodore replied that the vessel had not struck her colours, adding that the pennant was still flying, and begged Captain Otway to look at it.  The British officer gravely replied that he did not see it, and the mortified Danes were compelled to concede the ship.  Otway hastily cut her cables and towed her clear of the batteries.  Captain Brenton relates this anecdote.

             On the 4^th of April Lord Nelson went on shore to visit the Prince of Denmark.  Some accounts say the populace with marks of admiration and respect received the British admiral: in actual fact, a strong guard to assure his safety accompanied him.  Negotiations began and continued until the 9^th April, the British fleet meanwhile refitting, and preparing to bombard Copenhagen should hostilities be renewed.  There was much hesitation on the part of the Danes, and they honestly avowed their fact of the Russians.  Nelson answered that his reason in demanding a long armistice was in order to demolish the Russian fleet.  There was a great deal of procrastination, and one of the members of the Commission, speaking in French, suggested the possibility of a renewal of hostilities.  Nelson caught the words, and rounding upon the commissioner, cried: “Renew hostilities!  Oh, certainly, we are ready in a moment: ready to bombard this very night!”  The commissioner hastily apologised.

             A banquet had been prepared in the Palace, to which Nelson was invited; and as he passed through the corridors and up the staircase, he noticed that most of the apartments had been denuded of their furniture, in anticipation of a bombardment.  Glancing about him as he proceeded, Nelson exclaimed to a friend, sufficiently loud to be overheard.  “Though I’ve only one eye, I see all this will burn very well.”

            After this banquet Nelson and the Crown Prince were closeted together, and a fourteen weeks armistice was agreed upon.  The Danes had no alternative: most of their defences had been taken or destroyed.  Nearly all the floating hulks had been cannonaded into sieves.  Colonel Stewart states that the ships would have been knocked to pieces in much less time than four hours had Nelson’s misgivings of the North Country pilots not prevented him from occupying a much closer portion.  Admiral Fischer admitted the loss on the Danish side to be about eighteen men.  The British had two hundred and thirty-five men killed and six hundred and eighty-eight wounded.  The hulks and block-ships of the enemy were thus accounted for: Wagner, Provesteen, Jutland, Kronenburg, Hajen, and Suersishen were captured and burnt; the Aggerstonz and Nyburg sunk; the Zealand was burnt along with the Charlotte-Amelia and the Indosforethen; the Rensburg was driven ashore and burnt, and the Holstein alone was carried away by the British.

            The Danes had fought magnificently; but the valour of the seaman whom Nelson led on was irresistible.  That memorable day teems with instances of pluck on both sides.  One of these, at least, no narrative of the Battle of Copenhagen would be complete without.  A lad of about seventeen, named Welmoes, or Velmoes, had charge of a little floating battery, mounting six small cannon and manned by twenty-four men.  He poled his raft from the shore to right under the very stern of the Elephant, and began peppering the huge liner with his little artillery.  The marines of Nelson’s ship poured in several volleys with terrible effect, and twenty of the tiny band fell, killed or wounded.  But their boy commander stood, waist-deep amongst the corpses, and refused to quit his post until the truce was proclaimed.  Such gallantry was a sure appeal to Nelson, and at the banquet he requested the Crown Prince to introduce him to young Welmoes.  Having embraced the lad, he turned to the Prince and remarked that such a hero should be made an admiral.  “My lord,” was the answer, “if I were to make all my brave officers admirals, I should have no captains or lieutenants in my service.”