1808	Light Squadrons and Single Ships	74

Heneage Lawrence Dundas, and 18-gun brig-sloop Cruiser, Captain George Charles Mackenzie, being in the Great Belt, discovered off the entrance of the river Naskon several vessels at anchor very close to the shore. Captain Dundas immediately despatched four boats from the frigate and brig, under the orders of Lieutenant Michael Head, assisted by midshipmen Francis Wemyss, James William Otto Ricketts, Bernard Yeoman, Jacob Richards, Philip Gaymore, Richard Moffat, and Edward Loveday, to endeavour to destroy them.

Lieutenant Head and his party, in a very gallant manner, boarded and carried a large Danish gun-vessel, mounting two long 18-pounders, with a crew of 64 men, and moored within half pistol-shot of a battery of three long 18-pounders, and of a body of troops that lined the beach. Besides bringing off the gun-boat, the British set fire to and destroyed two large vessels fitted for the reception of troops ; and the whole service was executed with so slight a loss to the British as one man slightly wounded. On the part of the Danes, however, the loss was serious, amounting to seven men killed and 12 wounded.

Although, since the last affair at Copenhagen, the Danes had lost all, or nearly all, of their line-of-battle ships and frigates, they possessed some very stout brigs of war, and an immense number of well-armed gun-boats. In the calms that frequently prevailed in the Danish waters, the latter were particularly destructive to the British cruisers and convoys. The convoys were generally under the protection of one or more gun-brigs, a description of vessel, from their light carronade-armament, peculiarly exposed to successful attacks by the long 18, 24, and in some cases 36, pounders of the gun-boats. On the 4th of June, during a calm in the Great Belt, the Tickler gun-brig, commanded by Lieutenant John W. Skinner, was attacked by four Danish gun-boats, and, after a conflict of four hours, in which she had her commander and 14 men killed and 22 wounded, out of a complement of 50 men and boys, was obliged to surrender. For the loss of their vessel under such imperative circumstances, the surviving officers and crew obtained an honourable acquittal.

On the 9th of June, at 2 p.m., the British bomb-vessel Thunder, Captain James Caulfield, accompanied by the gun-brigs Charger, Lieutenant John Aitkin Blow, Piercer, Lieutenant John Sibrell, and Turbulent, Lieutenant George Wood, and a homeward-bound convoy of 70 merchant vessels, got under way from Malmo road, with a moderate northerly wind. At 4 h. 30 m. p.m. the wind began to fall, and at 5 p.m. entirely subsided. At 5 h. 20 m., just as the convoy had arrived abreast of the south end of the island of Saltholm, 25 Danish gun-vessels commenced an attack upon the Turbulent, whose station was in the rear. As the gun-boats approached, the Turbulent opened a fire upon them from her 18-pounder carronades, and the Thunder

^ back to top ^