Welsh Journals

ADMIRAL SIR THOMAS FOLEY. 115 three quarters of a mile wide, and in which channel, close to the town, the Danes had moored their block ships, radeaus, praams, and gun vessels. The distance of the anchorage from the city of Copenhagen was about six miles. The ships of Lord Nelson's detachment coasted along the edge of the Middle Ground until they had reached and partly rounded its southern extremity. Here, at about 8 p.m., just as it grew dark, they anchored. During this night Captain Hardy proceeded in a small boat to examine the channel between the British anchorage and the Danish line, and actually approached near enough to sound round the first ship of the latter, using a pole lest the noise of throwing the lead should lead to a discovery. The enemy's force consisted of two decked ships, chiefly old and in a dismantled condition; frigates, praams, and radeaus, eighteen in number, and mounting six hundred and twenty-eight guns, moored in a line from a mile to a mile and a half in extent, flanked at the town end by two artificial or pile-formed islands, called the Trekroner batteries, one of thirty twenty-four-pounders, and the other of thirty-eight thirty-six- pounders, with furnaces for heating shot, both batteries being commanded by the two two-decked block ships Mars and Elephanten. Many ships and batteries, with furnaces for heating shot, lay moored in advantageous positions. The Danish Com¬ mander was Commodore Olfert Fischer, with his broad pendant on board the Dannebrog, sixty-two. At 9 a.m., on the 2nd of April, the pilots and several of the masters were ordered on board the Elephant. The pilots were mostly men who had been mates in Baltic traders ; their hesitation and indecision about the bearings of the east end of the shoal, and the line of deep water might well have provoked a more patient man than Lord Nelson. At 9.30 a.m., however, the signal was made to weigh in succession. The Bellona, Sir Boulden Thompson, kept too close on the starboard shoal, and grounded four hundred and fifty yards from the Danish line. The Russell, closely following the Bellona, grounded in like manner, almost over the Bellona's taffrail. The Elephant was next to the Russell, and Captain Foley, as soon as he perceived the state of that ship and the Bellona, starboarded his helm, and passed to the westward of those ships, as did all the ships astern of the Elephant, At five minutes after ten the cannonade commenced ; and by half past eleven the action became general. At the end of a three hours' cannonade, few, if any, of the Danish ships had ceased firing. It was at this time that, in consequence, as is understood, of the pressing solicitations of the captain of the fleet, founded, amongst other reasons, upon information received a full hour before, that signals of distress were at the mast heads of the Bellona and Russell, the Commander-in-