Plan showing the body plan, sheer lines with inboard detail, and longitudinal half-breadth for Dictator (1783). The plan may represent her as built in 1783.
At the "Reduction of Trinidad" in 1797Dictator participated in the later stages, not having arrived until 18 February, the prize money awarded reflecting this late arrival.[4]
On 8 March 1801, whilst disembarking the army at the Battle of Aboukir during the French campaign in Egypt, one seaman was killed and a midshipman, Edward Robinson, fatally wounded.[5] Prize money for the capture of enemy ships was usually shared with other warships in the squadron between 1801 and 1806.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
Because Dictator served in the navy's Egyptian campaign between 8 March 1801 and 2 September, her officers and crew qualified for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty issued in 1847 to all surviving claimants.[lower-alpha 1]
Napoleonic Wars
Five Danish gunboats under command of Captain-Lieutenant J. J. Suenson are attacked by HMS Dictator on 26 June 1808.
In the late summer of 1807, Dictator was part of Admiral Gambier's fleet in the Øresund at the Battle of Copenhagen where she shared prize money with some 126 other British naval ships.[13] She was again in Danish Waters the following year, in Admiral Hood's squadron of four ships-of-the-line[14][15] together with some smaller vessels, tasked with maintaining the blockade between Jutland and Zealand. Her captain, Donald Campbell, ordered the sloop HMSFalcon to proceed on her successful patrols to Samsø, Tunø and Endelave.[16] In August 1809 Dictator was tasked with the occupation of the Pea Islands to the east of Bornholm but ran aground en route and had to be towed back to Karlskrona for repairs.[17]
In early July 1810, during the Gunboat War with Denmark-Norway, Dictator, in company with Edgar and Alonzo, sighted three Danish gunboats commanded by Lieutenant Peter Nicolay Skibsted, who had captured Grinder in April of that year. The gunboats (Husaren, Løberen, and Flink) sought refuge in Grenå, on eastern Jutland, where a company of soldiers and their field guns could provide cover. However, the British mounted a cutting out expedition of some 200 men in ten ships' boats after midnight on 7 July, capturing the three gunboats.[18][19][20][lower-alpha 2]
HMS Dictator (1783) in the foreground, with British marines sailing ashore, in the process of sinking the Najaden (1811), in the left background.
In 1812 Dictator led a small squadron consisting of three brigs, the 18-gun Cruizer-classbrig-sloopCalypso, 14-gun brig-sloopPodargus and the 14-gun gun brigFlamer. On 7 July they encountered the Danish-Norwegian vessels Najaden, a frigate finished in 1811 in part with parts salvaged from a ship-of-the-line destroyed in earlier battles, and three brigs, Kiel, Lolland and Samsøe. Najaden was under the command of Danish naval officer Hans Peter Holm (1772–1812)[22] In the subsequent Battle of LyngørDictator destroyed Najaden and the British took Laaland and Kiel as prizes but had to abandon them after the two vessels grounded. The action cost Dictator five killed and 24 wounded. In 1847 the surviving British participants were authorized to apply for the clasp "Off Mardoe 6 July 1812" to the Naval General Service Medal.
Under the rules of prize-money, the troopship Dictator shared in the proceeds of the capture of the American vessels in the Battle of Lake Borgne on 14 December 1814.[lower-alpha 3] HMS Dictator was one of several troopships among Admiral Alexander Cochrane's fleet moored off New Orleans at the start of 1815.[24]
Notes, citations, and references
Notes
↑ A first-class share of the prize money awarded in April 1823 was worth £34 2s 4d; a fifth-class share, that of a seaman, was worth 3s 11½d. The amount was small as the total had to be shared between 79 vessels and the entire army contingent.[12]
↑ Skibsted spent a year as a prisoner of war in England. On his return to Denmark he underwent a court martial for the loss of his vessels and was found guilty.[21]
The Gunboat War was a naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and the British during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the materially superior 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.
HDMS Najaden was a frigate in the Royal Danish-Norwegian Navy. She was commissioned in 1811 and originally carried 36 guns, later being upgraded to 42. She served briefly during the Gunboat War only seeing action once, when on 6 July 1812 the British ship of the line HMS Dictator and the Cruizer-class brig-sloop HMS Calypso sank her during the Battle of Lyngør. The Battle of Lyngør effectively ended Denmark's involvement in the Napoleonic Wars.
The Battle of Lyngør was a naval action fought between Denmark-Norway and the United Kingdom in 1812 on the southern coast of Norway. The battle ended in a Dano-Norwegian defeat, and marked the end of the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway's involvement in the Napoleonic Wars.
HDMS Najaden was a frigate of the Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy, which she served from 1796 until the British captured her in 1807. While in Dano-Norwegian service she participated in an action at Tripoli, North Africa. She served the Royal Navy as the fifth rate HMS Nyaden from 1808 until 1812 when she was broken up. During her brief British service she participated in some small attacks in the Barents Sea during the Anglo-Russian War.
HMS Fox was a 32-gun Active-class fifth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 2 June 1780 at Bursledon, Hampshire by George Parsons.
HMS Clio was a Cruizer-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, launched at James Betts' shipyard in Mistleythorn in Essex on 10 January 1807. Her establishment was 71 officers and men, 24 boys and 20 marines. She served in the Baltic during the Napoleonic Wars, accomplished the re-establishment of British rule on the Falkland Islands in 1833, and participated in the First Opium War. She was broken up in 1845.
HMS Hydra launched in 1797 was a fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. From 1813 to 1817 she served as a troopship. She was sold in 1820.
HMS Edgar was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, that saw service in the American Revolutionary, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Launched in 1779, she fought in the battles of Cape St Vincent and Copenhagen, two of the major naval engagements of the wars.
HDMS Brev Drageren was a Danish let brigger, launched in 1801 for the Royal Danish Navy. She was one of the many vessels the Danes surrendered to the British after the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807. She was subsequently added to the Royal Navy as HMS Brev Drageren, and was involved in two notable actions while in British service. She was sold in 1825.
HMS Calypso was a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop. She was built at Deptford Wharf between 1804 and 1805, and launched in 1805. She served in the North Sea and the Baltic, most notably at the Battle of Lyngør, which effectively ended the Gunboat War. Calypso was broken up in March 1821.
HMS Belette was an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop, built by King at Dover and launched on 21 March 1806. During the Napoleonic Wars she served with some success in the Baltic and the Caribbean. Belette was lost in the Kattegat in 1812 when she hit a rock off Læsø.
The Battle of Saltholm was fought on 9 June 1808 during the Gunboat War. Danish and Norwegian ships attacked a British convoy off the island of Saltholm in Øresund Strait near Copenhagen.
Grinder was a gunboat serving as a tender, rather than a commissioned warship, to HMS Anholt, the British garrison on the island of Anholt during the Gunboat War. Grinder's origins are obscure, but the Danes captured her in 1810 and the British recaptured her in 1811. She was sold in 1832.
Peter Nicolay Skibsted (1787–1832) was a Danish naval officer with a successful career marred only by the loss in 1810 of a squadron of three gunboats under his command to the British.
Hans Peter Holm was a Danish naval officer who commanded vessels of the Dano-Norwegian Navy in several actions. He commanded several naval vessels during the Gunboat War. His most important action occurred in 1812 at the Battle of Lyngør when a British squadron, led by the British ship-of-the-line HMS Dictator, destroyed his vessel, HDMS Najaden. Holm sustained wounds in the battle but survived, only to drown in an accident shortly afterwards.
HDMS Lolland was launched in March 1810. She served in at least four major engagements during the Gunboat War before she was transferred to the Norwegian navy after the Treaty of Kiel brought about the separation of Norway from Denmark in 1814. Lolland continued to serve with the Norwegian Navy until sold in 1847.
HDMS Allart, a brig launched at Copenhagen in June 1807, was amongst the ships taken by the British after the second Battle of Copenhagen. In British service, she was recaptured by Danish-Norwegian gunboats after venturing too close inshore. Her subsequent service was in the Dano-Norwegian Navy's Norwegian Brig Division, which harried enemy frigates and convoys in Norwegian waters. On the separation of Denmark from Norway in 1814, Allart transferred to the Norwegian navy, who sold her in 1825.
HMS Podargus was a Crocus-class brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She participated in one major battle during the Gunboat War between Britain and Denmark. After the war she served at Saint Helena for five or six years. On her return to Britain in 1820 she was laid up; she was finally sold in 1833.
Frantz Christopher Henrik Hohlenberg was a Danish naval officer who specialised in ship design and had little seagoing experience. He succeeded Ernst Wilhelm Stibolt as Master Shipbuilder (fabriksmester) at the Royal Danish Dockyards in 1796. His ships included five ships of the line and 18 frigates. Three of the ships of the line and nine of the frigates were captured at the 1807 Battle of Copenhagen and subsequently added to the Royal Navy. He resigned after a controversy in 1803.
Broder Knud Brodersen Wigelsen was an officer in the Royal Danish-Norwegian navy at the time of the gunboat war with Britain. After the war he served in various capacities, principally in the Danish customs service.
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