In the Hour of Victory

by Sam Willis

  Captain Robert Otway, Hyde Parker’s flag captain

  The Manor

  Tucked away in the English countryside, down narrow, leafy lanes, are the ghosts of long-vanished houses whose histories reach deep into our past. Just south of Saxmundham in Suffolk, only five miles or so from the coast, is the site of one of the finest, a house whose history is quite extraordinary for its scope. Several important houses have stood on this land, all known as Benhall Manor. The current house was built in 1810, five years after Trafalgar and five years before Napoleon was finally defeated. The land on which it stands, however, was significant enough to have been granted, in 1086, to the son of a man who had fought with William the Conqueror. The seat of the Dukes of Suffolk and the residence of two Lords Admiral, Benhall Manor was, for 500 years, central to the intrigues of the British court as it lurched from Norman to Plantagenet, Plantagenet to Lancaster, Lancaster to York, York to Tudor and from Catholic to Protestant. In such topsy-turvy times, a defining characteristic of so many of its inhabitants was that they were unable to remain in favour, or even alive, for very long.

  One of the earliest owners was John de Holland, Earl of Huntingdon, half-brother to Richard II. Holland was a stout supporter of the King. When, in 1400, Richard was deposed by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke who became Henry IV, de Holland led the failed Epiphany Uprising in an attempt to return the imprisoned Richard to the throne. Holland was subsequently captured and beheaded.

  Under Henry IV, the land passed to the de la Pole family, who were unlucky in war. Michael de la Pole died at the siege of Harfleur in 1415 and his eldest son was killed at Agincourt in the same year. The land then passed to his brother, William, who deserves an entire book to himself. He was the 1st Duke of Suffolk and later became Lord Chamberlain. Having married the grand-daughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, Suffolk became the most powerful figure in the realm under the weak Henry VI and, among his other titles, became Admiral of England. His eventual fall from power was followed by imprisonment in the Tower and then banishment but, on his way to exile in France, he was beheaded on the gunwale of his own ship. Many suspected that Richard of York, his arch rival and the subsequent Protector of the Realm, was responsible.

  The land soon passed to John de la Pole, a strong supporter of the new House of York that was established in 1461 by Richard of York’s son, Edward IV. Pole in fact married Edward’s sister and thus became brother-in law to two York monarchs, Edward IV and his younger brother Richard III. When Richard was defeated at Bosworth by Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, Pole served the new king loyally but his son, the new owner of Benhall, rebelled and was beheaded.

  Under Henry VIII, the land passed to the Catholic Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and Lord Admiral from 1515 to 1525. Howard was intimately involved in Tudor court life as the uncle of two of Henry’s wives, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. His own fall came with the fall of those wives, both of whom were executed. He was imprisoned, awaiting the blade, when the king died before sentence could be passed. Howard then helped Henry’s Catholic daughter, Mary, to secure the throne for herself.

  The lives of Benhall Manor’s subsequent occupants proved somewhat less turbulent, however, and in December 1801 the latest grand house to be built on the site was bought by Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, a 52-year-old from an impressive naval family who had been in the navy since the age of 12. However he too, like so many of its former residents, found himself out of favour and his influence and reputation crushed, despite having been sent, in the spring of 1801, to the Baltic in command of a massive British fleet bristling with hostility. That fleet had achieved an impressive victory at the Battle of Copenhagen but, as soon as it had been attained, Parker had immediately been recalled and was never employed again. The reasons why he fell so far from grace are complex and fascinating.

  The Puppet

  The Second Coalition against Revolutionary France, which had been formed in the aftermath of Nelson’s extraordinary victory at the Battle of the Nile, never lived up to expectations. Napoleon abandoned his Egyptian campaign and, in November 1799, returned to France to seize power from the weak Directory. He then led a bold campaign against the Austrians, who had regained much ground in Italy, and defeated them at the Battle of Marengo in the summer of 1800. The Russian Tsar, the cornerstone of the Second Coalition, had meanwhile begun to lose interest in his war against France and in his friendship with Britain, a shift in policy that was greatly abetted by the British siege of Malta.

  Napoleon had seized Malta from the Knights just prior to the Battle of the Nile. When Nelson crippled the French Mediterranean navy at the Nile, the garrison at Malta was isolated and the British attacked. This campaign was initially launched with the full backing of Tsar Paul, who had been elected Grand Master of the Order of the Knights of St John in the aftermath of Napoleon’s conquest; indeed the reconquest of Malta was a fundamental reason for Russian participation in the war. When the British retook Malta in September 1800, however, they refused to hand it back to the Knights. Its fine, deep harbour at Valetta was simply too valuable a strategic asset to give up.

  The British-Russian alliance snapped. Paul seized British sailors in Russian ports and marched them inland, through the Russian winter, to prison camps. Napoleon, meanwhile, took the opportunity to woo the Tsar with vague and entirely false suggestions that vast areas of Italy and Germany could be restored to their monarchs and that thousands of Russian prisoners, taken in 1799, could be repatriated. Napoleon’s promises may have been hollow but they are a clear indication of the extent to which Paul’s foreign policies benefited the French by hurting the British.

  The Russian-Austrian relationship had also crumbled during their combined campaigns to oust the French from Italy and Switzerland. The Austrians sought territorial gains of their own while the Russians, much as with their support of the British attack on Malta, were fighting to restore the traditional order shattered by Napoleon. By October 1799 the Russian-Austrian alliance had collapsed and the British were forced to choose between the two for a committed ally in their war against France. They chose Austria, which was politically more committed to a lengthy war and geographically more suited to a British alliance. The British decision to stand by the Austrians further irritated the Russians and it was not long before that irritation turned to antagonism.

  Another important aspect of the fragmentation of the Second Coalition was the issue of neutral trading rights. While armies collided and navies chased each other around the world, the British conducted an economic war by flexing their maritime muscle. In 1794 this had manifested itself in the failed campaign to secure the American grain convoy which had nonetheless led to fleet battle at The Glorious First of June. Imported shipbuilding stores were another target in the form of iron for anchors, hemp for rope, flax for canvas, pitch for seams and pine for planks. The warmongers needed a constant supply of these raw materials as much as the suppliers wanted to profit from their sale and, crucially, none of the major naval combatants was self-sufficient in any of them. Most of them had to be imported from the countries surrounding the Baltic: Russia, Denmark, which then included Norway, and Sweden. The flow of these materials therefore became a significant strategic issue.

  The British insisted that they had the right to search any ship, even a neutral ship, to prevent such goods from reaching Britain’s enemies. To assist them, they used a broad interpretation of the term ‘contraband’. The neutral nations, meanwhile, held tight to a narrow definition of ‘contraband’ and insisted on their right to trade with whomever they wanted. The Tsar of Russia, the leader of the key military and diplomatic power in the Baltic, was already irritated with the British and began to assume and enjoy a role as chivalrous protector of his Baltic neighbours.

  Such inherently contradictory national interests had always existed but they only became important now because of British naval success. The threat of invasion, which had been almost constant between 1794 and 1797, no longer existed. Nor, after th
e Battle of the Nile, was there a significant French naval presence in the Mediterranean, a sea which, in 1797, had been a French lake. During these early years British naval power had been stretched with squadrons active in numerous theatres and against numerous enemies. As a result neutral shipping had been relatively unmolested by the British; they simply hadn’t had the time. Now, however, the British began to use their newfound maritime dominance to threaten their enemies’ ability to rebuild their shattered fleets.

  The issue of neutral rights came to a head in the summer of 1800 because the Danes began to protect their convoys with armed escorts. Soon after, a Danish convoy, escorted by the frigate Freja, was stopped by a British squadron. The Freja refused to allow the British to search the fleet and fighting broke out with men falling on both sides. The entire Danish convoy was seized.

  Several similar instances of British ‘interference’ in neutral trade convoys gradually led to Tsar Paul hardening his stance until, in the late summer of 1800, he coerced Denmark, Sweden and Prussia into joining a ‘League of Armed Neutrality’, reviving a strategy that had proved very successful during the War of American Independence. The League insisted on the rights of neutrals to trade with warring parties of any nation. Moreover the word of any of their naval officers was to be considered sufficient proof of the nature of their cargo.

  The League had worked during the American War because the British had been stretched as never before and were unable to contest the neutrals’ claims. Now, however, the Royal Navy was basking in the glow of repeated success while Nelson had returned from the disaster of Naples and was itching to get back to sea. He desperately needed to get away from the gossip and embarrassment that had followed him home as he had publicly waltzed through Europe with Emma Hamilton, a married lady in the arms of a married man and neither married to the other.

  What Nelson most needed was a challenge and the Pitt government duly obliged by deciding to strike against the Tsar’s Baltic League. Not only were the British desperate to secure access to the Baltic shipping supplies but they had also suffered two poor grain harvests and the Baltic regions were always the most accessible source of foreign grain imports. Paul knew this and insisted that, when the agreement was signed on 16 December 1800, all signatories closed their ports to all British trade. Something had to be done.

  There were three navies to consider, the Russian, the Danish and the Swedish. The Russian navy was the largest by far but the Danish was the most strategically significant because of its location at the gates of the Baltic. The Swedish navy was of little concern on its own but, if joined with the Russian or Danish, would create a powerful force indeed. If all three navies united, they could send no less than 96 ships of the line to sea.

  The time of year was also important. Because the harbours of the western Baltic thawed earlier than those in the east, if an attack could be launched in the early spring, the Baltic allies could be dealt with in two separate campaigns. A force was therefore gathered to strike at Copenhagen. If the Danes and Swedes could be neutralised, then the Russian naval threat could be dealt with later in the year and without an enemy still threatening in the rear.

  There was, however, an alternative way of seeing things. The League of Armed Neutrality was instigated and held together by the Russians. Without the threat of Russian force over their heads, the Danes and Swedes posed no threat at all to the British. Certainly, both countries had navies, but they existed to neutralise each other’s naval threat. In 1800 Norway was part of Denmark but the Swedes were anxious to seize the country for themselves. Any viable threat to either country’s naval power was therefore a threat to the immediate future of the country itself and that was far more important to both the Swedes and the Danes than their belief in neutral trading rights. If the Swedish navy was destroyed, the Danes could hold Norway; if the Danish navy was destroyed, the Swedes could take it back. It followed therefore that, with the Russians out of the picture, the issues raised by the League of Armed Neutrality would disappear. In short, the problem posed by Denmark could be neutralised by attacking Russia.

  As things stood in the New Year of 1801, however, Copenhagen remained the primary target simply because it guarded the easiest and quickest route into the Baltic and because the Danes greatly feared the prospect of Russian reprisals for non-compliance in the League. The vast Russian army could, in effect, snatch Danish land at will, either by direct action or by imposing political pressure backed by military force. The Danes were also seen as being weak. They had little time to prepare to meet a British attack, nor could they rely on any help from Sweden, nominally part of the Baltic pack but in reality a lurking, lone hyena.

  The Danes, however, still had the potential to stage a formidable defence, if only it could be set up in time. The approaches to Copenhagen are awkward for a single ship, let alone for a fleet under fire whose captains have little knowledge of Copenhagen Sound. To protect their fleet for a future clash with Sweden, the Danes decided that the defence of Copenhagen against British attack would be conducted by heavily armed floating batteries anchored near the treacherous shoal water scattered around the Sound. These would be supported by the powerful Trekroner battery that guarded the entrance to the harbour. Such defences could be manned by inexperienced sailors. Obviously battle experience would be an advantage but volunteers could be trained in a relatively short time to fire from a steady platform. The Danes were promised three months’ wages and free medical treatment if wounded, while at the same time Prince Frederick made it clear that they would be pressed if they did not volunteer. This mixture of bribery and threat ensured that more than enough men were found to man the formidable Danish defences but it was no easy matter to get the ships into position and the men aboard.

  Raising men took time, however it was done, and the particular problems of establishing a defence of floating batteries are worth considering in some detail. The floating batteries were, in fact, old warships without masts and rigging. They could not, therefore, be sailed into position but had to be dragged all the way out of Copenhagen harbour and down the King’s Channel by a process known as kedging. A large warship had several anchors the largest of which, the bower anchors, weighed as much as five tons apiece and were very difficult to move at all. A ship therefore carried a variety of smaller anchors, each with a different function. The kedge anchor weighed around a ton. To kedge the ship, one of her larger boats was launched and brought around to the side. The kedge anchor was then hoisted from the deck using a tackle attached to one of the lower yards, swung over the ship’s side and lowered into the waiting boat with an appropriate length of cable and secured. If there was any room left for a crew, they would row the boat a hundred yards or so ahead of the ship; otherwise another boat would tow her to the desired location where the anchor would be dropped. The cable would be run from the anchor back aboard the ship through one of the bow hawseholes and around the capstan. The ship’s crew would then turn the mighty capstan, forcing the anchor to bite deep into the sea bed and dragging the ship forward. The process would then be repeated until the ship was in the desired location which, for many of the Danish warships in 1801, was two or three miles from where they had started.

  Once in place, the ship was secured by four anchors and her position carefully adjusted until each anchor bore an equal weight and each anchor cable was a similar length. This was an exhausting and time-consuming process even for one ship, but the Danes had identified 12 such dismasted vessels to defend Copenhagen Sound. They all had to be kedged into position and a further seven ships anchored appropriately in relation to the floating batteries and shore batteries. And it was March when the temperature in Copenhagen rarely rose above freezing.

  The Danes, therefore, had the makings of an impressive defence, even without using most of their own seaworthy ships or enlisting the help of any Swedish ships. It would all be useless, however, if the British could strike hard and early. Fortunately for the Danes, the man who had been sent to command the
British fleet at Copenhagen was Admiral Hyde Parker.

  The Newlywed

  The second son of a well-respected vice-admiral, Parker was chosen to lead at Copenhagen because of the knowledge he had gained in 1791 when planning for a war with Russia during the Ochakov Crisis, another collision over British access to Baltic naval stores. Appointed fleet captain to Lord Hood, the proposed leader of the earlier expedition, Parker had helped to draw up plans for a blockade of the Russian naval bases of Revel and Kronstadt. However, the Ochakov crisis evaporated when Pitt climbed down from his aggressive stance because British public opinion shared none of his enthusiasm for a distant war. So Parker had first-hand experience not of the Baltic itself, but of planning for a war in the Baltic. In fact, George Murray of the Edgar and Frederick Thesiger and Nicholas Tomlinson who had both served as mercenaries in the Russian navy, were the only captains that sailed to Copenhagen in 1801 who had first-hand knowledge of that treacherous, narrow and shallow sea.

  Parker nonetheless enjoyed a certain professional reputation. He was 61, he came from an established naval family and he had some experience of fleet warfare. His service history went right back to 1751 and he had served in the East Indies during the Seven Years War (1756–63), gaining his first command at the age of 21. He had then played an important role in the next war, the War of American Independence (1775–82), taking part in the fierce fleet battle against the Dutch at the Dogger Bank in 1781. He had, however, missed the four major fleet battles of the Revolutionary wars, though he had been present at Hotham’s minor, indecisive, engagement with the French off Genoa in the summer of 1795. Parker also had experience of dealing with enemy fleets in harbour. He had been present at the attack in 1776 on the North River in New York, which had been defended by floating batteries, gunboats and shore batteries and again at the 1793 surrender of the Toulon squadron to Lord Hood at the very beginning of the Revolutionary war.