by Roy Adkins
On shore, Captain Harry Ross-Lewin of the 32nd Regiment was critical of the soldiers’ behaviour after their victory:On the 29th he [Wellesley] defeated the Danes near Kioge, and took about eleven hundred prisoners. This duty was performed effectually, but the men were guilty of many excesses. The Danes pay the greatest respect to the remains of their deceased relations, keeping the churchyards uncommonly neat, and adorning them with well-executed monuments, chiefly of white marble. Some of these were wantonly injured by the soldiers, and several of the tombs were broken open by them in the expectation of finding money, rings, and other trinkets. Not content with these insults to the dead, they stripped many living females of their necklaces and ear-rings, sometimes tearing the latter through the flesh; but immediate steps were taken to put a stop to such outrages. 38
Wellesley’s defeat of the Danish force proved to be the turning point, after which the British gradually gained control of the city. By 2 September Chambers was able to report that ‘our Army have cut off the source of water from the City of Copenhagen’,39 but the Danes refused to surrender and the bombardment continued. Three days later Chambers was called from his bed in the early hours:At 5 this morning was informed the largest church44 in Copenhagen was on fire . . . I instantly jumped out of bed and ran on deck with only a great coaton. I then cast my eyes to the accustomed quarter and derived a melancholy gratification on beholding the sacred edifice so roughly handled by that all-devouring element. The Spire - a very lofty one - was an octagonal building, beautifully ornamented with gilded decorations, but alas! had fallen to the ground from near its base . . . the remaining steeple, which is also considerably high, exhibited a woeful spectacle, being encompassed to its now uncouth summit by the sacrilegious flames which were vomited out in torrents from the different windows and outlets . . . Having gazed till novelty was overbalanced by sorrow for such an event, I proceeded below.40
The terrifying bombardment continued through the day, but Chambers then remarked: ‘This evening to our astonishment there was no repetition of the bombardment, which made us suspect that a negotiation might possibly be carrying on, for scarcely a gun was fired on either side.’41 His suspicion was correct and the next day, 6 September, the Danes agreed to give up their fleet and naval stores in return for a British withdrawal and an exchange of all prisoners. It had been a costly episode for the Danes. The authorities had ignored British offers for civilians to be evacuated before the bombardment began, and around two thousand people lost their lives, including many women and children, as well as about two hundred and fifty of the defending troops and seamen. Many more lost their homes. Some of the officers went into the city, including Robert Blakeney, an eighteen-year-old ensign in the 28th Regiment:The spectacle was lamentable and well calculated to rouse every feeling of sympathy. Many houses were still smouldering, and in part crumbled to the ground; mothers were bewailing the melancholy fate of their slaughtered children, and there was not one but deplored the loss of some fondly beloved relative or dearly valued friend. Yet they received us with dignified, though cool courtesy, in part suppressing that horror and antipathy which they must have felt at our presence, though some indeed exclaimed that their sufferings were the more aggravated as being inflicted contrary to the laws of all civilised nations. The unfortunate sufferers seemed not to reflect that war was will, not law.42
In the days that followed the cease-fire Chambers, who had already bought some Danish items and rescued the dog, continued to add to his souvenirs, and on 10 September he noted:Was this day presented with a Danish tourniquet, and pair of pistols, found in one of the enemy’s gun vessels; the latter are evidently more constructed for utility than ornament. Lieut. Setford likewise having a brace, thoughtlessly pointed one at me and snapped the trigger, luckily it didn’t go off, for on examination immediately afterwards to our astonishment it was found primed and loaded. The ball I now have in my possession. A large concourse of Danes have been looking on from the beach at our Sailors employed with their shipping, at whose manoeuvres they do not seem well satisfied. Heard that four Lieutenants are ordered under arrest by Sir Samuel Hood [of Diamond Rock fame] for marooning as the nautical phrase is, i.e., embezzling a few small articles for their own use, during the time they were employed in Copenhagen Dockyard.43
The siege and bombardment also furnished the name for the horse that Wellesley (as the Duke of Wellington) would ride at the Battle of Waterloo. Major-General Thomas Grosvenor took his favourite mare with him on the expedition to Copenhagen, but on arrival the horse was found to be in foal and was sent home. The chestnut foal, named Copenhagen, was later bought by Wellesley and became his favourite horse, which carried him all day at Waterloo. The horse retired to the Duke’s house at Stratfield Saye in Hampshire, and was buried with full military honours in 1836.
The Danish warships were taken out of the dockyard, and all the naval supplies removed or destroyed, as Blakeney described: ‘In less than six weeks after the fall of Copenhagen (which time was occupied in rendering the Danish ships seaworthy, and spoiling its well-stored arsenal to the last nail and minutest rope-yard) we departed, carrying away with us, as prizes, eighteen sail of the line, fifteen frigates, five brigs, and twenty gunboats.’44 Ross-Lewin was aggrieved at the lack of prize money awarded: ‘The ships and stores brought off from Copenhagen were valued in England at four millions and a half sterling, and it was supposed cost the Danes about ten millions; but as no formal declaration of war had been made, it was decided that the captors were not entitled to prize-money, and a sum of only eight hundred thousand pounds was granted by way of compensation to that portion of the army and navy which had been engaged in the siege of Copenhagen.’45
The success of the Copenhagen expedition did nothing to diminish the outcry against what was seen by many as an unprovoked attack on a neutral state. Others had no such doubts. When news of the action reached him in early November. Marine Captain Wybourn in the Repulse, now part of Admiral Collingwood’s Mediterranean fleet, happily wrote:The Captain sent us various papers up to the 8th of October, which was a great treat indeed. The full particulars of the Danish affairs were in them, stating that Copenhagen Capitulated on the 7th of September with all their Fleet, Stores & Ammunition etc., etc. fell into our hands - 114 Ships & Vessels of War & more naval stores than will fill all our fleet & their own. This must be a death blow to Boneparte, as it is certain he meant to seize that Country & employ all its force against us, as there was five times the quantity of stores more than was necessary for all the Danish fleet. It will also again check a Northern Confederacy &, by all the papers, Russia appears dissatisfied with the Peace of Tilset [Tilsit].46
Despite the optimism of the newspapers that inspired Wybourn’s enthusiasm, Napoleon was anything but finished, and many years of conflict lay ahead before there would be a lasting peace in Europe. The Mediterranean was still a key battle ground, but ever since Trafalgar the main danger was from privateers and pirates45 rather than enemy fleets, which were kept in port by the blockade. Three days after Wybourn had received his ‘great treat’ Captain Thomas Cochrane was taking his ship, the Imperieuse, to join Collingwood’s fleet when he was becalmed within sight of another ship that he believed was a privateer. The only way to investigate was by boat, and three boatloads of marines were sent. Cochrane reported what happened in a letter to Collingwood:I am sorry to inform your Lordship of a circumstance which has already been fatal to two of our best men, and I fear of thirteen others wounded two will not survive. These wounds they received in an engagement with a set of desperate savages collected in a privateer, said to be the King George, of Malta, wherein the only subjects of his Britannic Majesty were three Maltese boys, one Gibraltar man, and a naturalised captain; the others being renegadoes from all countries, and great part of them belonging to nations at war with Great Britain. This vessel, my Lord, was close to the Corsican shore. On the near approach of our boats a union-jack was hung over her gunwale. Oneboat of the three, which had no gun,
went within hail, and told them that we were English. The boats then approached, but when close alongside, the colours of the stranger were taken in, and a barbarous volley of grape and musketry discharged in the most barbarous and savage manner, their muskets and blunderbusses being pointed from beneath the netting close to the people’s breasts.47
It was this first volley that caused most of the casualties, and knowing that if the boats pulled away they would have to retreat under fire, the marines swarmed aboard. A fierce fight followed and the crew of the privateer was cut to pieces by Cochrane’s men. The few who were not wounded eventually surrendered, but it was then found that the ship was a British privateer. Both ships had mistaken the other for the enemy. Cochrane was dismayed, but since the papers of the King George were not in order and the crew seemed anything but British, he sent the vessel to the authorities at Malta. In a typical instance of duplicity the prize court ruled that since the papers were not in order, the King George would be seized as a prize, but being a friendly vessel, all prize money would go to the crown. Everyone involved in the incident was a loser by this decision, and Cochrane keenly felt the loss of his men by such a mistake, which is why his letter to Collingwood read more like an admission of failure than a report of success. He ended it with the words, ‘The bravery shown and exertion used on this occasion were worthy of a better cause.’48 Collingwood saw things differently and was impressed by the initiative of the latest addition to his command. It would not be many months before Cochrane was released from the tedium of blockade and convoy duties to carry the war to the enemy in his own individual way.Also in late 1807, the American government was still considering what response to make after the attack by the Leopard on the Chesapeake. In Britain it was felt that America was not truly neutral, and in his diary entry for 7 December the artist Joseph Farington echoed that view:
This day appeared in the papers the message of Mr Jefferson, President of the United States, to Congress delivered the 27th of Oct. It evinces more partiality to France than any document which the American government has for a long time published. While Mr. Jefferson declaims with great warmth against what He calls the depredations of this country on American commerce, the numerous aggressions of France are passed over without observation . . . The affair of the Chesapeake is mentioned with much irritation. The finances of the United States are stated to be very flourishing.49
While Farington was reading this in newspapers in England, the Americans were pushing through the Embargo Act, in which all American commerce with foreign countries was prohibited. It became law on 22 December, and its aim was to withhold raw materials and manufactured goods from the warring European nations, forcing the war to a close. Instead its immediate effect was to cripple the American economy.
In reality the embargo made very little immediate difference to Britain’s economy, and the British Navy was more concerned about the disruption of trade by privateers. This threat was still most serious in the West Indies, and in December the 18-gun brig Recruit was sailing out to join the squadron that Britain was forced to maintain to protect the merchant ships. The Recruit was commanded by the twenty-six-year-old lieutenant the Honourable Warwick Lake, who had already served more than ten years in the navy. At Falmouth in Cornwall, to bring the crew up to strength, ten men had been pressed from the privateer Lord Nelson, including a local man called Robert Jeffery. Born at Fowey, he had moved to Polperro with his family as a young boy, and after being reasonably well educated he went to work in his stepfather’s smithy. He found the lure of the sea irresistible and signed on as a seaman with the Lord Nelson, only to be forced into the navy. When he was taken on board the Recruit, he was only seventeen and legally below the age of impressment.
The Recruit was not a happy ship and during the voyage to the West Indies several crew members were flogged for being ill-disciplined and drunk, and Jeffery was held in irons for two days for stealing rum, before receiving a flogging of twenty-four lashes. About two weeks later he was caught stealing beer from a cask, which he admitted, claiming that he was dying of thirst in the heat - it was later reported that the men were kept short of water, although the officers had plenty. Captain Lake ordered Jeffery’s name to be added to a list of those to be allocated unpleasant jobs, but late in the afternoon on the same day he was again summoned before the captain, who was by now in a fury, declaring that ‘he would not keep such a man in his ship’. 50 Lake told Jeffrey that he was going to be left on the island they were approaching, and he was forbidden to take food, water and spare clothing.
The island of Sombrero is in the very north of the Leeward Islands, some 40 miles from the nearest inhabited land. Just three-quarters of a mile long and up to 400 yards wide, the island had seabirds and lizards, but no water or trees. It had been given its name by the Spanish, because its profile resembled that of a sombrero hat. The second lieutenant, Richard Mould, remonstrated with Lake, but was ordered to take Jeffery in the jolly-boat to the island. On looking round the tiny sliver of land, the boat’s crew ‘found nothing on it; it was a barren spot, covered in the middle with a rough grass weed’.51 Some of them gave Jeffery their own possessions - a knife, handkerchiefs and even a pair of shoes as his bare feet were by now cut and bleeding after climbing up the side of the cliff. They returned to the Recruit, leaving a greatly distressed Jeffery, who ‘expected every moment that a boat would be put off to take him on board’.52 This was an unprecedented type of punishment, as Robert Jeffery had in effect been left to die. It was 13 December 1807, two days after his eighteenth birthday.
The log books recorded that Jeffery had been left on the island, but in the muster book, in which all members of the crew were listed, the purser added ‘R’ for ‘run’, incorrectly signifying that he had deserted. This was later erased and replaced with ‘Sombrero Island 14th December’.53 The Recruit continued patrolling to the south until reaching Barbados at the end of January 1808, where the flagship of the fleet commander, Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, was anchored. On learning about Jeffery, he immediately sent Captain Lake back to Sombrero to rescue him, but by the time the Recruit reached the tiny island, two months had elapsed since Jeffery’s abandonment. The search party found only the remains of a pair of trousers and the handle from a tomahawk or hatchet: of Jeffery there was no trace. In years to come, his treatment of Jeffery was to return to haunt Captain Lake, but for now that was the end of the matter.
ELEVEN
THE SEA WOLF
Five thousand men, at the disposal of Lord Cochrane or Sir Sidney Smith . . . would have rendered more service to the common cause than five times that number on shore, because they could at all times choose their points of attack, and the enemy, never knowing where to expect them, would everywhere be in fear.
Opinion of Sir Walter Scott1
In November 1807 news began to filter back to Britain about another incident that had taken place on the other side of the Atlantic - the capture in the West Indies of a French privateer, the Génie, that operated out of Guadeloupe. A letter describing the action, from a passenger on board the British ship Windsor Castle, was published in the Naval Chronicle:In the morning of the 1st of October, the man at the masthead called out ‘a sail’: we were soon convinced that all hopes of escape, by swiftness, were vain. We therefore had the netting stuffed with hammocks and sails, the arms all prepared, and the hands at quarters, when the enemy began to fire at about 40 minutes past eleven, A.M., but as his shot did not reach us, we did not return his fire till about half past twelve, and so continued till he closed, and grappled us on the starboard quarter, at about quarter past one. In this situation it became quite calm, and the vessels could not have separated even had they been inclined. As soon as they grappled us, our boarders were prepared with their pikes, but our nettings were so lofty, and so well secured, that they did not attempt to board; our pikemen, therefore, again flew to their muskets, pistols, and blunderbusses; our captain all the while giving his orders with the most admirable coo
lness, and encouraging his men by his speeches, and example, in such a way, that there was no thought of yielding, although many of our heroes now lay stretched upon deck in their blood; but then we saw the enemy’s deck completely covered with their dead and wounded, and the fire from our great guns doing dreadful execution at every discharge. We now began to hear them scream, which so inspired our gallant little crew, that many of the wounded returned again to their quarters. At length, about a quarter past three, the rascals ran from their quarters, when our captain, with five or six of his brave comrades, rushed on board, killed their captain, tore down their colours, and drove the few remaining on deck below, and the privateer surrendered.2
The Windsor Castle passenger described how the odds had been against them:Our force consisted of a small ship of 180 tons, mounted with six 4-pounders and two sixes, manned with 28 people, officers and boys included, of which there were four of the latter under 17 years old. The privateer was called the Genii, . . . mounting six long sixes, and one long 18-pounder fixed upon a swivel in the centre of her main-deck, and traversing upon a circle, so that this enormous piece of ordnance was worked just as easily as a common sized swivel; and having on board, at the commencement of the fight, 86 men, of which number 26 were killed, or died in a few hours after the action, and 30 more are wounded, many of whom will also die: not one of their officers escaped being killed or wounded. Both vessels were greatly damaged in the action . . . On our side we lost three brave fellows, two of whom were killed on the spot, and the third died the same evening; another, I fear, is mortally wounded through the breast and shoulder. We had, besides, nine men wounded, and three or four of them badly.3
