In the summer of 1807, England was advised that by the treaty of Tilsit Russia and Prussia had secretly joined Napoleon in his purpose of finally crushing his mortal enemy by uniting all the fleets of Europe against her, Denmark’s too, by compulsion if persuasion failed. Without warning a British fleet swooped down upon the unsuspecting nation, busy with the pursuits of peace, bombarded and burned Copenhagen when the Commandant refused to deliver the ships into the hands of the robbers as a “pledge of peace,” and carried away ships, supplies, even the carpenters’ tools in the navy-yard. Nothing was spared. Seventy vessels, sixteen of them ships of the line, fell into their hands, and supplies that filled ninety-two transports beside. A single fighting ship was left to Denmark of all her fleet,—the Prince Christian Frederik of sixty-eight guns. She happened to be away in a Norwegian port and so escaped. Willemoes was on leave serving in the Russian navy, but hastened home when news came of the burning of Copenhagen, and found a berth under Captain Jessen.
On March 22, 1808, the Prince Christian, so she was popularly called, hunting a British frigate that was making Danish waters insecure, met in the Kattegat the Stately and the Nassau, each like herself of sixty-eight guns. The Nassau was the old Holsteen, renamed,—the single prize the victors had carried home from the battle of Copenhagen. Three British frigates were working up to join them. The coast of Seeland was near, but wind and tide cut off escape to the Sound. Captain Jessen ran his ship in close under the shore so that at the last he might beach her, and awaited the enemy there.
The sun had set, but the night was clear when the fight between the three ships began. With one on either side, hardly a pistol-shot away, Jessen returned shot for shot, giving as good as they sent, and with such success that at the end of an hour and a half the Britons dropped astern to make repairs. The Prince Christian drifted, helpless, with rudder shot to pieces, half a wreck, rigging all gone, and a number of her guns demolished. But when the enemy returned he was hailed with a cheer and a broadside, and the fight was on once more. This time they were three to one; one of the British frigates of forty-four guns had come up and joined in.
When the hull of the Prince Christian was literally knocked to pieces, and of her 576 men 69 lay dead and 137 wounded, including the chief and all of his officers who were yet alive, Captain Jessen determined as a last desperate chance to run one of his opponents down and board her with what remained of his crew. But his officers showed him that it was impossible; the ship could not be manœuvred. There was a momentary lull in the fire and out of the night came a cry, “Strike your colors!” The Danish reply was a hurrah and a volley from all the standing guns. Three broad-sides crashed into the doomed ship in quick succession, and the battle was over. The Prince Christian stood upon the shore, a wreck.
Young Willemoes was spared the grief of seeing the last Danish man-of-war strike its flag. In the hottest of the fight, as he jumped upon a gun the better to locate the enemy in the gloom, a cannon-ball took off the top of his head. He fell into the arms of a fellow officer with the muttered words, “Oh God! my head—my country!” and was dead. In his report of the fight Captain Jessen wrote against his name: “Fell in battle—honored as he is missed.” They made his grave on shore with the fallen sailors, and as the sea washed up other bodies they were buried with them.
The British captured the wreck, but they could only set fire to it after removing the wounded. In the night it blew up where it stood. That was the end of the last ship of Denmark’s proud navy.
Footnotes:
[13] It is of record that Queen Sofie Amalie used one-third of the annual revenues of the country for her household. The menu of a single “rustic dinner” of the court mentions 200 courses and nearly as many kinds of preserves and dessert, served on gold, with wines in corresponding abundance.
[14] The battle of Copenhagen was fought April 2, 1801.