Action of 19 February | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of Ove Gjedde's expedition | |||||||
Ove Gjedde captures two French privateers off Cape Verde, by an unknown author | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
French pirates France | |||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Ove Gjedde | Unknown | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
HDMS Elephanten | Lion d'or Jageren | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
4 ships | 3 ships | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Unknown | 2 ships hijacked 1 ship burned |
The Action of 19 February 1619 was a naval engagement between Denmark-Norway, under the leadership of Ove Gjedde, and French privateers, which took place on 19 February 1619, during the first Danish expedition to India. Two French vessels were taken and incorporated into the Royal Danish Navy.
In 1615 a French ship under Abraham du Quesne, was hijacked by the Danish-Norwegian navy and sent to Copenhagen. [1] [2] The French, who had reluctantly tried to get compensation for the ships, now addressed the situation for the French government. [1] The result was that on 9 Juli 1622, Louis XIII allowed them to hijack and bring Danish vessels to France and arrest all Danish ships, slaves and goods, which came to France. [1]
Christian IV of Denmark-Norway interrupted all Danish contact with France as a response. [1] This conflict continued, with Abraham du Quesne still complaining about the loss of his ship, even though a treaty on the matter of tensions were signed in 1628. [1] [3]
Concurrent with the Dano-French privateer conflict, Denmark-Norway tried to establish itself in the Indian subcontinent, and therefore sent an expeditionary fleet, led by Ove Gjedde to Ceylon. [4] [5] In Oktober 1618 he left Copenhagen, [6] and with 5 vessels and 300 men he set out for Asia to establish a post for the Danish East India Company. [4] [6] because of the Dano-French tensions, Ove gjedde could therefore see any French vessel as an enemy. [7] This sort of naval warfare was supported and protected by both the French and Danish governments. [7]
On the 18 February 1619, Ove Gjedde and his expeditionary fleet got Cape Verde in sight. [8] [9] The vessel, Elephanten, together with a Dutch yacht, went ahead and spotted six ships moored in the harbour. [8] When the admiral of Elephanten saw the ships, he demanded that the Dutch yacht was to get closer to land, while he laid anchor at a nearby island with three other Danish ships. [8] The admiral suspected that the ships could be privateers and would therefore try to lure them out of the habour, which he succeeded in. [8] On the morning the following day, three of the ships went out of the harbour. [8] Ove Gjedde quickly demanded that Elephanten to chase the three ships, which turned out to be French. [5] The French vessels, the largest being Lion d'or, were on their way to Guinea and Brazil. [1]
Elephanten accompanied by two other ships, went for a short battle with two of the three French ships. [8] After a short battle both ships were hijacked and incorporated into the Danish-Norwegian navy. [5] The third ship went ashore and was burned. [8]
The three other ships moored to the harbour of Cape Verde were presumably also privateers, since they, in all silence the following night, left the harbour. [8] The crew of the French ships were divided into the Danish vessels, [9] and the Ships were renamed Patientia and Jageren respectively which would be used in the further expedition to Tranquebar. [10] The expedition would end in mixed results, yet would establish Danish India. [11]
Christian IV was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Holstein and Schleswig from 1588 until his death in 1648. His reign of 59 years and 330 days is the longest in Scandinavian history.
Vice-Admiral Peter Jansen Wessel Tordenskiold was a Royal Dano-Norwegian navy officer and nobleman. Born in Trondheim, he travelled to Copenhagen in 1704 and eventually join the Dano-Norwegian navy, rising to the rank of vice-admiral for his actions during the Great Northern War. He won a name for himself through audacity and courage and was ennobled as Peter Tordenskiold by Frederick IV of Denmark in 1716. His greatest exploit came later that year, as he destroyed a supply fleet of the Swedish Navy at the Battle of Dynekilen, ensuring the siege of Fredriksten would end in failure. In 1720, he was killed in a duel. He ranks among the most famous naval captains in Denmark and Norway. He experienced an unusually rapid rise in rank and died when he was only 30 years old.
The Danish East India Company refers to two separate Danish-Norwegian chartered companies. The first company operated between 1616 and 1650. The second company existed between 1670 and 1729, however, in 1730 it was re-founded as the Asiatic Company.
Danish India was the name given to the forts and factories of Denmark in the Indian subcontinent, forming part of the Danish overseas colonies. Denmark–Norway held colonial possessions in India for more than 200 years, including the town of Tharangambadi in present-day Tamil Nadu state, Serampore in present-day West Bengal, and the Nicobar Islands, currently part of India's union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Danish and Norwegian presence in India was of little significance to the major European powers as they presented neither a military nor a mercantile threat. Dano-Norwegian ventures in India, as elsewhere, were typically undercapitalized and never able to dominate or monopolize trade routes in the same way that British, French, and Portuguese ventures could.
Jens Eriksen Munk was a Danish-Norwegian navigator and explorer. He entered into the service of King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway and is most noted for his attempts to find the Northwest Passage.
Ove Gjedde was a Danish nobleman and Admiral of the Realm. He established the Danish colony at Tranquebar and constructed Fort Dansborg as the base for the Danish settlement. He was a member of the interim government that followed the death of King Christian IV, which imposed restrictions by the Haandfæstning on his successor King Frederick III.
Carl Wilhelm Jessen was a Danish naval officer and Governor of St Thomas in the Danish West Indies.
Events from the year 1619 in Denmark.
HDMS Elephanten was a ship of the line of the Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy that served from 1703 to 1728. There were three other Danish ships-of-the line of the same name, dating from 1684, 1741 and 1773. The ship was sometimes referred to as Nye Elefant to differentiate from others of similar name. For much of her service career, which coincided with the Great Northern War, Elephanten was the flagship of the Danish fleet active in the Baltic Sea.
HDMS Elephanten was an 18th-century ship-of-the-line in the Dano-Norwegian navy that was built at Nyholmen in Copenhagen by Laurent Barbé and ornamentation by J.Wiedewelt.
The privateer brig Admiral Juel was the second largest ship in Denmark-Norway to be granted letters of marque during the Gunboat War between Denmark and Britain. The British Royal Navy captured her in a notable single ship action in 1808.
The Dano-Mughal War, formally the Danish East India Company's War against the Mughal Empire, was a colonial and maritime conflict between the Mughal Empire and the Danish East India Company over trade commerce in the Bay of Bengal. Lasting from 1642 to 1698, the conflict has also been referred to by historians as the Dano-Bengali Thirty Years' War.
The siege of Dansborg or the siege of Fort Dansborg, was a siege of the newly finished Danish fort of Dansborg in Trangebar in 1624. The siege was initiated by the nayak of Thanjavur, Raghunatha, because of the Danish rejection of the demands from the nayak. The siege, laid by general Calicut, was abandoned after the arrival of Danish reinforcements from sea. The event is mostly described by Icelander, Jón Ólafsson, in his work The Life of the Icelander Jón Ólafsson, Traveller to India.
Roland Crappé's raids on Portuguese colonies refers to a series of raids by Dutchman in Danish service, Roland Crappé, on Portuguese Ceylon and India. The raids were partially unsuccessful, in that Crappé's ship, Øresund, caught fire and sank.
The Conflict between William Leyel and Bernt Pessart refers to the tensions and minor civil war between Willem Leyel and Bernt Pessart over the governorship of Tranquebar and the Danish East India Company. The conflict led to the escape of Bernt Pessart, and the command at Tranquebar accepted Willem Leyel as governor of Danish India.
The Battle of Balasore was an engagement between Bengali and English ships against Danish ships at Balasore. When the English failed to persuade the Danes, the Bengalis started attacking the English vessel, yet the English were rescued by the Dutch.
Roland Crappé or Roelant Crappé was a Dutch colonial official serving the Dutch and Danish East India Company. He became director general of the Ceylonese department of the Danish East India Company in 1618 and became commander in chief and governor of Tranquebar upon his seventh arrival in the Indies in 1624. During his leadership, new factories and offices were established and Danish trade went exceptionally well. He died in 1644 only a few years after his homecoming to Denmark.
The Tranquebar Treaty of 1620 formally the Treaty between Raghunatha Nayak and Christian IV, was a treaty of friendship between the Thanjavur Nayak kingdom and Denmark–Norway in 1620. The treaty would establish Danish Tranquebar: a base that would be the headquarters of Danish India for the next 200 years.
The frigate and man-of-war Flensborg, or Flensburg, was a Danish East Indiaman sent on 2 December 1629 to Tranquebar as the third cargo to India. However, it was blown up by the Portuguese off the Cape of Good Hope in 1630.
Ove Gjedde's Expedition or the Danish Expedition to India of 1618–1622 was the first Danish colonial expedition to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, reaching Ceylon, Thanjavur and Ayutthaya. The expedition was initiated by the newly established Danish East India Company and led by 24-year-old Ove Gjedde. Despite not achieving its original goal of monopolizing Ceylon, the expedition still managed to receive control and trading privileges over various coastal towns and cities.