Gunboat War

The Gunboat War
Part of the English Wars and the Napoleonic Wars
Battle between the frigate HMS Tartar and Danish gunboats at Alvøen near Bergen in 1808
Date 1807–1814 Location Danish-Norwegian waters Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom	Denmark–Norway Supported by: French Empire

The Gunboat War (1807–1814) was the naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the conventional 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.

The naval conflict between Britain and Denmark commenced with the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 when Horatio Nelson's squadron of Admiral Parker's fleet attacked the Danish capital. This came as a basis of Denmark-Norway's policy of armed neutrality during the latter stages of the French Revolutionary Wars, where Denmark used its naval forces to protect trade flowing within, into and out of the Danish-Norwegian waters. Hostilities between Denmark-Norway and the United Kingdom broke out again by the Second Battle of Copenhagen in 1807, when the British attacked the Danish capital to ensure that the Danish-Norwegian fleet did not fall into the hands of Napoleon.

As a result of the British confiscation and destruction of large parts of the Danish-Norwegian fleet during the assault on Copenhagen, the Dano-Norwegian government decided to build gunboats in large numbers to compensate the loss. The gunboats were originally designed by a Swede, Fredrik Henrik af Chapman, and the strategic advantage of gunboats lay in the fact that they could be produced rapidly and inexpensively throughout the kingdom. The tactical advantages were that they were highly manoeuvrable, especially in still and shallow waters and presented small targets. On the other hand, the boats were vulnerable and likely to sink from a single hit. They therefore could not be used in rough seas, and they were less effective against large warships. Still, the Danish-Norwegian government produced more than 200 gunboats in two models: the shallop gunboat which had a crew of 76 men, with an 18- or 24-pounder cannon in the bow and another in the stern, and the smaller barge type that had a total crew of 24 men, armed with a single 24-pounder.

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