The Gunboat War (1807–1814) was a naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and Great Britain supported by Sweden during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the materially superior Royal Navy. In Scandinavia it is seen as the later stage of the English Wars, whose commencement is accounted as the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.
Background
The naval conflict between Britain and Denmark-Norway commenced with the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 when Horatio Nelson's squadron of Admiral Hyde Parker's fleet attacked the Danish capital. This came as a basis of Denmark-Norway's policy of armed neutrality during the latter stages of the French Revolutionary Wars, where Denmark used its naval forces to protect trade flowing within, into and out of the Danish-Norwegian waters. Hostilities between Denmark-Norway and the United Kingdom broke out again by the Second Battle of Copenhagen in 1807, when the British attacked the Danish capital to ensure that the Danish-Norwegian fleet did not fall into the hands of Napoleon.
Danish boat design
As a result of the British capture or scuttling of large parts of the Danish-Norwegian fleet during the assault on Copenhagen, the Dano-Norwegian government decided to build gunboats in large numbers to compensate for the loss. The gunboats were originally designed by a Swede, Fredrik Henrik af Chapman, and the strategic advantage of gunboats lay in the fact that they could be produced rapidly and inexpensively throughout the kingdoms. The tactical advantages were that they were highly manoeuvrable, especially in still and shallow waters and presented small targets. On the other hand, the boats were vulnerable and likely to sink from a single hit. They therefore could not be used in rough seas, and they were less effective against large warships. Still, the Danish-Norwegian government produced more than 200 gunboats in two models: the shallop gunboat which had a crew of 76 men, with an 18- or 24-pounder cannon in the bow and another in the stern, and the smaller barge type that had a total crew of 24 men, armed with a single 24-pounder.
The Danish Commodore (later, Admiral) Steen Andersen Bille (1751–1833) is credited with being the driving force behind the post-1807 Dano-Norwegian strategy of gunboat warfare. Below is a description of each of the four classes of gunboats according to Junior Lieutenant Hans Georg Garde, himself a commander of one of the larger types of gunboats.
- Kanonchaluppen: These were the larger type of gunboat. Each was armed with two 24-pounder cannon and four 4-pounder howitzers and had a wartime establishment of 69 – 79 men.
- Kanonjollen: These were the smaller type of gunboat. Each was armed with one 24-pounder cannon and two 4-pounder howitzers, and had wartime establishment of 41 men.
- Morterchaluppen: These were the larger, mortar-armed gunboats. Each was armed with one 100-pounder mortar and two 4-pounder howitzers, and had a wartime establishment of 40 men.
- Morterbarkasserne: These were smaller, mortar-armed gunboats. Each was armed with one mortar and had a wartime establishment of 19 men. They were little more than ordinary ships' boats into which a mortar had been set. They had a tendency to leak badly after 5 – 7 mortar shells had been fired. Their crews then had to bring them back into harbour, remove the mortar, and recaulk their vessels.
Reserve crew who could not be accommodated on board were quartered in buildings on land or in the frigate Triton which was in ordinary. Battle-ready gunboats had their crews on board.
Defences on the Norwegian coast in 1808 by the navy and the Kystmilicien are listed at Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy order of battle in Norway (1808). Ten schooner-rigged gunboats capable of operating in the rougher Norwegian Sea were built in Bergen and Trondheim in the years 1808 to 1811.
War
In the first three years of the Gunboat War, these boats were on several occasions able to seize enemy cargo ships from their convoys and to capture British brigs, though they were not strong enough to overcome larger frigates and ships of the line. The British had control of Danish waters during the whole of the 1807–1814 war, and when the season was suited to navigation they were regularly able to escort large merchant convoys out through the Sound and the Great Belt. Although the discussion below focuses on armed encounters involving an exchange of fire, one must keep in mind that the British also captured numerous Danish privateers without firing a shot, and regularly seized Danish merchant vessels as prizes. The British also conducted amphibious landings on several Danish islands, many populated but lacking garrisons. British warships frequently landed to replenish their stocks of firewood, fresh water and livestock, which were purchased or seized to augment their provisions.
The war overlapped, in time, the Anglo-Russian War. As a result, the British expanded their trade embargo to Russian waters and the British navy conducted forays northwards into the Barents Sea. The British navy conducted successful raids on Hasvik and Hammerfest and disrupted the Pomor trade, the Norwegian trade with Russia.
1807–08
On 12 August 1807, even before the war had been declared, the British sixth-rate HMS Comus took part in a one-sided single-ship action when she captured the 32-gun Danish frigate (fregat) Friderichsværn. In the engagement the British suffered only one man wounded; the Danes lost 12 men while 20 were wounded, some mortally. Lloyd's List described the Danish vessel as a "Danish Frigate, of 32 Guns, late Guardship", and reported that the action, near Elsinor, had been short. The Royal Navy took Frederiksværn into service as HMS Frederickscoarn.
On 23 August, the British HMS Prometheus fired Congreve rockets from her decks against a Danish gunboat flotilla, but the attack had little effect. The British were instead more successful on 11 September when HMS Carrier brought to the British Admiralty the despatches from Admiral Thomas McNamara Russell announcing the capitulation of the small island of Heligoland to the British. Heligoland later also became a centre for smuggling and for espionage against Napoleon.
In the East Indies, troops from the 14th Regiment of Foot landed from HMS Russell on the Coromandel Coast on 13 February 1808 and took over the Danish possessions at Tranquebar. On 14 March, the 14-gun HMS Childers and the Danish 20-gun sloop HDMS Lougen engaged in an inconclusive single-ship action. Childers lost two men killed and nine wounded before she could escape and return to Leith. On 22 March the British ships of the line HMS Nassau and HMS Stately destroyed the last Danish ship of the line, HDMS Prinds Christian Frederik, commanded by Captain C.W. Jessen, in the Battle of Zealand Point. Nassau was herself a former Danish warship. Nassau had one man killed and 16 men wounded, while Stately had four killed and 27 wounded. The Danes lost 55 men killed and 88 wounded.
Boats from HMS Daphne and HMS Tartarus, supported by the brig HMS Forward, drove ashore a Dano-Norwegian convoy at Flodstrand, near The Skaw on 22 April. The convoy was taking supplies to Norway as a result of supply shortages that had occurred there after the British had begun their naval blockade between Denmark and Norway in 1807. The British went in under heavy fire from the shore and a castle there and brought out five brigs, three galliots, a schooner, and a sloop (totalling some 870 tons burthen), for the loss of five men wounded. The British frigate HMS Tartar also approached Bergen under Dutch colours on 15 May in order to attack the Dutch frigate Guelderland, which had been undergoing repairs there. Unfortunately for the British the Guelderland had already sailed, so during the night the British sent in boats in an attempt to capture Danish shipping in the harbour. When the boats came under heavy fire, Tartar came in to cover them, only to come under attack by the schooner Odin and five gunboats. During the Battle of Alvøen Tartar's captain and another seaman were killed and twelve men were wounded before Tartar was able to make her escape.
The hired armed cutter Swan found herself in action off the island of Bornholm with a Danish 8-gun cutter-rigged vessel on 24 May. Swan had been carrying despatches when she had spotted the Danish vessel and lured her out. The engagement ended with the Danish vessel exploding, while Swan suffered no casualties despite coming under fire both from the Danish vessel and batteries on Bornholm. The fire from the batteries and the sighting of more Danish vessels forced Swan to withdraw after the battle without being able to make efforts to rescue survivors. On 4 June four Danish gunboats attacked HMS Tickler and captured her after a four-hour fight. Tickler had lost her captain and 14 other men killed, and 22 other officers and men killed and wounded out of her crew of 50 men; the Danes had one man wounded. The Danes would later use Tickler as a cadet training ship.
The Danes were also victorious on 19 June, when the brig HMS Seagull pursued and caught up with the Danish brig HDMS Lougen, which was armed with eighteen short 18-pounder guns and two long 6-pounder guns. About 20 minutes into the engagement six Danish gunboats arrived from behind some rocks and in two divisions of three each took up positions on Seagull's quarter and fired on her with their 24-pounder guns while Lougen fired on her larboard bow. Within half an hour the Danish fire had badly damaged Seagull's rigging and dismounted five of her guns. Eventually Seagull struck, having lost eight men killed and 20 wounded, including her captain, R.B. Cathcart. Seagull sank soon after the Danes captured her, drowning several of her captors who were aboard. The Danes later recovered Seagull and added her to their navy. The Danes also captured HMS Tigress. Sixteen Danish gunboats captured her off Langeland in the Great Belt on 2 August. In the engagement Tigress lost two men killed and eight wounded.
Immobilized by a dead calm, HMS Africa, under Captain John Barrett, barely survived an attack by 25 Danish gunboats and seven armed launches under the command of Commodore J.C. Krieger in an action in the Øresund on 20 October 1808. Africa lost nine men killed and 51 wounded; had night not descended the Danes might well have captured her. The British, however, were less fortunate on 5 December, when the bomb vessel HMS Proselyte was wrecked on Anholt Reef while caught in the ice. The reason that the vessel sank in that area was because the Danes had closed the lighthouse on the island of Anholt, in the Kattegat early during the war, and the Admiralty had ordered her to station herself off the island on 9 November to carry a light for the safety of passing convoys. All her crew was however saved.
1809–10
The British 64-gun third rate Standard, under Captain Aiskew Paffard Hollis, and the 18-pounder 36-gun frigate HMS Owen Glendower captured the island of Anholt on 18 May 1809. A party of seamen and marines under the command of Captain William Selby of Owen Glendower, with the assistance of Captain Edward Nicolls of the Standard's marines, landed. The Danish garrison of 170 men put up a sharp, but ineffectual resistance that killed one British marine and wounded two before the garrison then surrendered and the British took immediate possession of the island. The principal objective of the mission was to restore the lighthouse on Anholt to its pre-war state to facilitate the movement of British men of war and merchantmen navigating the dangerous seas there.