Background
During the later stages of the French Revolutionary Wars (1793-1802), Denmark–Norway, Prussia, and Sweden established the Second League of Armed Neutrality (1800-1801), intending to protect their trade in the Baltic from the British. However, Britain attacked Denmark with the First Battle of Copenhagen in April 1801. Slightly in advance of that, a British fleet arrived at St Thomas at the end of March. The Danes accepted the Articles of Capitulation the British proposed and the British occupied the islands without a shot being fired. The British occupation lasted until April 1802, when the British returned the islands to Denmark.
After the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, in 1804 Britain embarked on a campaign in the West Indies. By 1810 every single French, Dutch and Danish colony there was firmly under allied (mainly British) control.
The occupation of the Danish West Indies was a consequence of the British fear that Denmark–Norway would ally with Napoleon. Hostilities between Denmark–Norway and the United Kingdom broke out again by the Second Battle of Copenhagen in August 1807, when the British attacked the Danish capital to ensure that the Danish-Norwegian fleet did not fall into the hands of Napoleon.
In the West Indies, Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane had been in readiness to invade the Danish colonies since receiving a warning on 2 September 1807 that hostilities with Denmark–Norway were likely to break out. [1] In October vessels of the British Royal Navy started capturing Danish vessels at sea.
The Gunboat War was a naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and Great Britain supported by Sweden 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.
Lion was a Téméraire class 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the French Navy, which later served in the Royal Navy. She was named Lion on 23 April 1790 and built at Rochefort from August 1791 until June 1794. She was renamed Marat on 28 September 1793 and then Formidable on 25 May 1795, with the changing fortunes of the French Revolution.
HMS Aetna was the mercantile Success launched in 1803 at Littlehampton. The Admiralty purchased her in 1803 for conversion into a Royal Navy bomb vessel. Aetna participated in the second Battle of Copenhagen in 1807 and the Battle of the Basque Roads in 1809. Later, she participated in the attack on Fort McHenry in the Battle of Baltimore and the bombardment of Fort Washington, Maryland in 1814, during the War of 1812. The Navy sold her in 1816 and she returned to mercantile service under her original name. She sailed to Calcutta, to Rio de Janeiro, and more locally until she was wrecked in 1823.
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.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Thomas John Cochrane was a Royal Navy officer. After serving as a junior officer during the French Revolutionary Wars, he captured the French ship Favourite off the coast of Dutch Guiana and then took part in various actions including the capture of the Virgin Islands from Danish forces, the capture of the French island of Martinique and the capture of the French archipelago of Îles des Saintes during the Napoleonic Wars. He also took part in the burning of Washington and the attack on Baltimore during the War of 1812.
HMS Northumberland was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at the yards of Barnard, Deptford and launched on 2 February 1798. She carried Napoleon to his final exile on St Helena.
HMS Canada was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 17 September 1765 at Woolwich Dockyard.
HMS Prince George was a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 31 August 1772 at Chatham. During her career, she was upgraded to a 98-gun ship, through the addition of eight 12-pounder guns to her quarterdeck.
HMS Ramillies was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 12 July 1785 at Rotherhithe.
HMS Dictator was a 64-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 6 January 1783 at Limehouse. She was converted into a troopship in 1798, and broken up in 1817.
Vice-Admiral Sir William Charles Fahie KCB was a prominent British Royal Navy officer during the American War of Independence, French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars. Unusually, Fahie's service was almost entirely spent in the West Indies, where he had been born and where he lived during the time he was in reserve and in his retirement. After extensive service in the Caribbean during the American War of Independence, during which Fahie impressed with his local knowledge, Fahie was in reserve between 1783 and 1793, returning to service to participate in Sir John Jervis' campaign against the French West Indian islands in 1794.
HMS Ethalion was a Royal Navy 36-gun frigate, launched in 1802 at Woolwich Dockyard. She was eventually broken up in 1877.
HMS Tartar was a 32-gun fifth-rate Narcissus-class frigate of the Royal Navy, built at Frindsbury and launched in 1801. She captured privateers on the Jamaica station and fought in the Gunboat War and elsewhere in the Baltic Sea before being lost to grounding off Estonia in 1811.
HMS Arab was a 22-gun post ship of the Royal Navy. She was formerly the 18-gun French privateer Brave, which the British captured in 1798. She served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars until she was sold in 1810.
Joseph Spear was an officer of the Royal Navy who served during the American War of Independence, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Captain Woodley Francis Losack was an officer of the British Royal Navy, who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He participated in the Battle of Tamatave (1811) as captain of HMS Galatea.
HMS Pultusk was the American-built French privateer sloop Austerlitz, which had been launched in 1805 and which the Royal Navy captured in 1807 and took into service as HMS Pultusk. Pultusk served in three campaigns, two of which resulted, some four decades later, in the award of medals, and one boat action that too received a medal. She was broken up in 1810.
HMS Fawn was a Cormorant-class ship-sloop of the British Royal Navy, launched in 1807. Before she was sold in 1818 she captured one privateer and destroyed another, and participated in three campaigns. In all, her crew qualified for three clasps to the Naval General Service medal (NGSM). After the Royal Navy sold her in 1818 she became a whaler. She then made seven whaling voyages to the Pacific, and especially to the waters off New Zealand, between 1820 and 1844. She was broken up on her return from her last voyage.
HMS Saint Christopher was the French privateer Mohawk, launched in 1805, that the Royal Navy captured in 1806. The citizens of Saint Kitts, purchased her and donated her to the Royal Navy. She was broken up at Antigua in 1811.
HMS Hart was a French schooner launched in 1789 that in 1804 was renamed Empereur and that cruised as a privateer out of Guadeloupe. The British Royal Navy captured Empereur in 1805 and took her into service. She captured numerous small merchant vessels and participated in the capture of the Danish West Indies in December 1807. The Navy sold her in 1810.
United Kingdom 
Denmark-Norway 
Alexander Cochrane 
Hans Lillienskjøld