On 2 April 1801 a British squadron under Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson attacked the Danish and Norwegian ships and floating batteries moored in front of Copenhagen. Three British ships ran aground, the Danes fought hard from a strong position, and at one point Nelson's superior, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, signaled him to break off. Nelson fought on. By mid-afternoon most Danish fire had stopped, a truce followed, and within a week Denmark had agreed to an armistice that took it out of the anti-British league of northern powers.
Why Britain sailed for Copenhagen
At the end of 1800 Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Denmark formed an Armed Neutrality to protect their shipping from British searches at sea. Britain saw it as a hostile league that could cut its supply of naval stores from the Baltic and drift into alliance with France. A fleet was sent to break it up. Its commander was Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, chosen largely for seniority, and Nelson was his second in command.1
According to HistoryOfWar.org, the fleet forced the Sound past the guns of Kronborg Castle on 30 March. The Danes had moored a line of ships, most of them not fit for sea, as floating batteries in front of the city, backed by the Trekroner fort at its northern end. Parker gave Nelson twelve ships of the line and the smaller vessels for the attack, while he stayed to the north with the heavier ships.2
The battle in the King's Deep
Nelson, flying his flag in HMS Elephant, attacked on the morning of 2 April. The channel was poorly charted, since the Danes had removed the navigation marks, and three British ships of the line, Agamemnon, Bellona and Russell, grounded or failed to reach their stations. The rest anchored opposite the Danish line and fought at close range for hours. HistoryOfWar.org stresses that the Danes, many of them inexperienced, were fighting in sight of their capital and could send fresh men out to the ships from the shore.3
Watching from a distance through the smoke, Parker hoisted the signal to discontinue the action at about 1:15 p.m., according to Britannica, after some three hours of fighting. HistoryOfWar.org relates that Captain Edward Riou, whose frigates could see Parker's flagship more easily than Nelson's, obeyed and was cut in two by a shot as his ship turned away.4
The blind eye
Nelson had the signal acknowledged but not repeated. In the account of Colonel William Stewart, who was aboard the Elephant, he told his flag captain Thomas Foley that he had only one eye and a right to be blind sometimes, put his telescope to the blind eye and said he could not see the signal. Britannica cautions that the story may be apocryphal, but in any case Nelson fought on.5
By late afternoon, Britannica writes, the Danes were taking a battering. According to HistoryOfWar.org, most Danish fire had stopped by about 2:30, although some ships kept firing after their officers had surrendered. Nelson offered a truce, in the view of Royal Museums Greenwich to save the Danish wounded in the sinking and burning ships, and the firing ended. HistoryOfWar.org adds that the burning Danish flagship Dannebrog blew up at about 4:30, killing over 250 men.6
Losses and the armistice
The losses are uncertain, and the two accounts used here disagree. HistoryOfWar.org gives 790 Danes killed and 910 wounded, and 253 British killed and 688 wounded. Britannica gives about 1,700 Danish dead or wounded and 2,000 captured, against about 1,000 British dead or wounded.7
The next day Nelson went ashore to negotiate with Crown Prince Frederik, the regent. HistoryOfWar.org gives 9 April as the day the two sides agreed a fourteen week armistice, during which Denmark left the Armed Neutrality. The league soon collapsed anyway, because Tsar Paul I of Russia, its main sponsor, had been murdered shortly before the battle. HistoryOfWar.org judges it Nelson's hardest fought and least influential victory, since Britain sent another expedition to Copenhagen in 1807. Nelson's career is covered in our article on Horatio Nelson.8
