Copenhagen
Background
In the early part of 1801 tensions were growing in an area where Britain did not normally keep a fleet, the Baltic. The neutral Scandinavian countries (Norway then belonging to Denmark) supplied naval stores to both sides in the conflict, but cargoes intended for France were frequently seized by the blockading British squadrons, creating a great deal of resentment. Napoleon was therefore able to get the Baltic countries, Russia and Prussia as well as Sweden and Denmark, to form an alliance (the League of Armed Neutrality, which could in theory muster a combined fleet of fifty ships of the line) to protect their neutral trade.
Russia went so far as to impound any British ships in its ports, agreeing to release them only if Britain agreed to let neutral vessels trade unhindered, whether their cargoes were warlike or not. Britain refused, and St Vincent, then First Sea Lord, advised an attack on Copenhagen, the nearest significant target, though Nelson apparently favoured an initial strike against Russia.
An expeditionary fleet was gathered together by taking ships from the Channel Fleet together with various vessels in home ports at the time, for various reasons. The fleet consisted of 18 of the line plus 35 smaller vessels, and was considered too large for a rear-admiral: Nelson was therefore made only second-in command. Overall command went to Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, recently returned from command of the Jamaica station: his record as a fighting sailor was negligeable, and his nickname "Old Vinegar", earned in the American war, reflected his reputation for a "bitter choleric temper".
Why Parker was appointed remains a mystery, though it is true that it was thought the fleet would probably not have to fight, and St Vincent was known to resent him. (Of Parker he wrote on another occasion: "...as he has had no work whatever or responsibility to affect his mind or body, during the whole of his command, he is very well able to come out in the Royal George and give me a spell....") Since St Vincent was known to think sea officers in wartime should not marry, he probably was even more annoyed by Parker's recent marriage to the eighteen-year-old daughter of Admiral Onslow (see 'The Bomb Vessel' in the Drinkwater series), and simply wanted to put him to work.
After much procrastination Parker finally set sail with the fleet on March 12, with Rear-Admiral Graves as third in command after Nelson, arriving in Danish waters on March 18, where he waited and held innumerable Councils of War. Finally, at one held on March 31, Nelson offered to take ten of the line and "annihilate the Danes". Meanwhile of course the Danes had had ample time to build up their defences.
The coastline at Copenhagen runs north and south, facing east, and was infested with shore batteries. A number of ships of the line had been moored in a line off shore, with the gaps between them being filled with rafts mounting cannon: there were about twenty ships and rafts in the line, with other vessels moored behind them.
The heaviest defensive concentration was at the northern end; Nelson therefore determined to sail his ships down the outer channel of the harbour (out of range of the defensive guns), tack around the shoals (called the Middle Ground) that divided the outer from the inner channels, and attack from the south. Before this could be done, the shoals had to be carefully buoyed: this was done in the night of March 31-April 1, and on April 1 the fleet sailed south through the outer channel, mooring for the night at the bottom of the channel. The wind was SSE, but the channel slanted south-west enough to make it possible to get through.
The battle (2 April 1801)
The wind was still SSE, more or less parallel with the shore, so that the British had it astern as they came up the inner channel. The battle however opened disastrously, with Bellona (later to be commanded by Jack Aubrey in a number of books) and Russel running aground after they had tacked round the Middle Ground. Agamemnon even failed to make it round, remaining stranded more or less where she had moored overnight.
For three hours heavy gunfire was exchanged between ships and shore. Parker sent three ships, Veteran, Ramillies and Defence, to replace those that had run aground, but they made painfully slow progress beating up into the wind.
Then, at 12:30, in a famous moment, Parker hoisted signal 39 - "discontinue the action", and, whatever he may have said , or whichever eye he looked through his telescope with, Nelson ignored it.
So in fact did every other ship in the fleet, apart from a few frigates and smaller ships not directly involved in the firing, since it was a general order, which every ship was supposed to obey directly, whatever their intermediate commander may have done. Withdrawal would in any case have been suicidal. The Danes would not have ceased firing, and taking men from the guns to make sail would have left the ships virtually defenceless. Before the fleet withdrew, the defence's guns had to be silenced.
Nelson's Elephant continue to fly the signal "Engage more closely", and the fleet obeyed. By about two many of the Danish defences were out of action, the bombardment slowed down, and Nelson sent a flag of truce suggesting an end to hostilities. This finally came at 3:15, after nearly six hours of continuous gunfire.
Aftermath
Nelson's legend continued of course to grow. Anyone who knows Nelson's name knows two things: that he died at Trafalgar, and that he put a telescope to his blind eye.
Hyde Parker was however ruined, to the extent that many officers refused even to talk with him. He left negotiations with the Danes to Nelson (they knew Nelson - who was Hyde Parker?) and eventually an armistice was declared. Very shortly after he was ordered home to England, and ordered by the Admiralty to strike his flag and come ashore. He was never employed again.
Meanwhile Nelson was placed in overall command, sailing for Russia, where he was assured that the impounded British merchantmen would be released. Nelson then in his turn handed over command to Vice-Admiral Pole and went home in a brig (Kite).
Strategically, the victory had its effect on the other members of the League, emphasised on Russia's part by the murder of Tsar Paul and the succession of Tsar Alexander, who was better disposed to England (the general, who by all accounts had masterminded the assassination with Alexander's connivance, was in fact a subject of King George, though a Hanoverian, not a Briton). The Swedish fleet, though it had put to sea, returned to its anchorage at Carlskrona.
The French, successful on land, had now been defeated everywhere (pretty well) at sea, and nothing looked like altering that balance of power. The tension therefore slackened, eventually ending in a kind of draw with the peace of Amiens in March 1802 - though this of course turned out to be a temporary truce.
While the British liked to think that Amiens representes a 'kind of draw', in fact Napoleon was left in full control of Europe: while Britain had fought a succesful defence and established its mastery of the sea, its only gains had been minor colonial ones. None of its original war aims had been achieved.
Notes
What did Nelson say?Take your choice of one or all.
- "Leave off action! Now damn me if I do!"
- "You know, Foley, I have only one eye, and I have a right to be blind sometimes"
- With his blind eye to the telescope "I really do not see the signal"
- or, succinctly, "I see no signal"
Bolitho, also by now an admiral (his career tracks Nelson's closely), is recorded as commanding the inshore squadron at the battle ('The Inshore Squadron'), and the still lowly Drinkwater was in command of a bomb vessel ('The Bomb Vessel').