page_title: Gunboat War
section_title: 1809–10
hierarchical_section_title: Gunboat War / War / 1809–10
caption_attribution_description: Dansk: Briggen Turbulent tages af danske kanonbåde den 9. juni 1808
context_page_description: The Gunboat War was the naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the conventional 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.
context_section_description: 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.
  On 9 June a Danish and Norwegian flotilla of twenty-one gunboats and seven mortar boats attacked a British convoy of 70 merchant ships off the island of Saltholm in Øresund Strait near Copenhagen. The Dano-Norwegian flotilla was able to capture 12 or 13 merchant vessels, plus HMS Turbulent, one of the escorts. The Danes also captured HMS Allart during the Battle of Saltholm on 10 August. During the battle HMS Allart, a former Danish Navy brig, chased Lougen and Seagull into Fredriksvern only to find herself pursued by 15 Danish gunboats, arrayed in three divisions. After a three-hour chase the gunboats closed with Allart and an engagement began. After two hours Allart struck, having had her rigging shot away and having lost one man killed and three wounded.
  On 12 August, Commander John Willoughby Marshall and HMS Lynx were in the company of the gun-brig HMS Monkey, Lieutenant Thomas Fitzgerald, when they discovered three Danish luggers off the Danish coast.  The water was too shallow for Lynx, so Marshall sent Monkey and boats from Lynx in to cut them out.  The largest of the luggers, which had four guns and four howitzers, opened fire on Monkey before all three luggers ran ashore once Monkey and the launch's 18-pounder carronade returned fire. The British refloated the luggers and brought them out the next day, having taken no casualties.  In their haste to quit the vessel, the Danes failed to fire the fuse on a cask of gunpowder they had left by the fireplace on the largest lugger. Marshall thought the Danes' behaviour in leaving the explosive device disgraceful. 
  The Danish-Norwegian navy managed to capture another British vessel on 2 September, when a Danish gunboat flotilla from Fladstrand, North Jutland, under the command of Lieutenant Nicolai H. Tuxen, captured the gun-brig HMS Minx. The engagement cost Minx two dead and nine wounded. The British Royal Navy had stationed her off the Skaw Reef to show a warning light. HMS Sheldrake reported the loss to the Admiralty.
  Early in 1810 the Danes ceased sending provisioning ships to Norway because of British naval activity in Øresund and withdrew the naval officers that were so involved to Zealand. Meanwhile, there were difficulties in transporting grain from the Vordingborg, in the south of Denmark, past Møn to Copenhagen. This was overcome by using gunboats to convoy the merchant vessels, as the gunboats were much more maneuverable in the shallow coastal waters, and restricting the cargo vessels to those which could pass inside of Møn. Larger seagoing ships which would have to go outside, i.e. east of Møn, were too liable to be caught by the British.  These actions, together with a good form of coastal signalling, resulted in a steady supply of grain to the Danish capital.
  On 13 April 1810, four Danish gunboats, under the command of First Lieutenant Peter Nicolay Skibsted, captured the British gunboat Grinder off the Djursland peninsula near Grenå. Grinder was armed with one 24-pounder gun and one 24-pounder carronade. She was under the command of Master's Mate Thomas Hester and had over-wintered at Anholt. Of her crew of 34 men, two were killed and two wounded in the action. 
  On 23 May, seven Danish gunboats engaged the Cruizer-class brig-sloop Raleigh, Alban, and His Majesty's hired armed cutter Princess of Wales, o
caption: Danish gunboats seizing HMS Turbulent, 9 June 1808.
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