Heligoland (3 page)

Although for innumerable years thereafter various Viking chiefs vied for sovereignty of the island, such a hold as they were able to achieve was often precarious and disinterested. As a consequence there were often lengthy phases when the Heligolanders were left alone, and so virtually governed themselves. In a sense King Canute the Great of Denmark increased the island’s constitutional promiscuity. By virtue of his becoming King of England in 1017, Heligoland came within the ambit of the English Crown for the period of his reign, which ended in 1036. In so far as there were subsequent links they were occasional, almost entirely of a commercial nature, and took the form of trips made by small merchant ships between the island and London’s Billingsgate Market. In Britain it was only such traders who knew of the existence of Heligoland, together with a few mariners who had sought shelter there in bad weather or had perhaps transhipped some cargo in its waters. This remained the situation for centuries. In 1553 Richard Chancellor, the pilot-general of the exploration vessel
Bonaventure
, en route via Russia to search for a north-east passage to India, noted its existence in his journal – but he only happened to catch sight of it from a distance when his ship was blown off course by a storm. In Napoleonic times there was great need for a wider knowledge of Heligoland but no one had ever bothered to write down – in any language – any sort of history or pilotage notes.

Another beguiling feature of Heligoland’s capriciousness was its ever-changing geographical appearance. By Napoleonic times it had changed dramatically from just a few centuries earlier. About the year 800 it had become home to a civilisation as advanced as any in northern Europe, with several villages scattered over the island. Then covering some 24 sq. miles, it was wooded and fairly low-lying. In the south-west corner there was a huge mound, above which there towered two adjoining promontories, one of red stone and the other of white. Radiating outwards from the centre of the island were ten rivers. At the sources of the northernmost of those rivers were temples that had earlier been used for worshipping Tosla, Mars, Jupiter and Venus; in the south could be found a monastery and five churches. In inlets around the coastline were six anchorages, the three most important of which were on the leeward side of the island protected by three castles. But according to a map of Heligoland produced by the cartographer Johannes Mejerg in 1649, the gnawing away of the coastline by wave erosion and storms had been so voracious that by the year 1300 the sea had devoured all but 4 square miles of the hilly south-west corner of the island. All that remained at its fringes were the monastery, a church and the castle. By 1649 these too had vanished, leaving just an ‘H’-shaped island, half red and half white, from which extended sandy reefs shaped like giant lobster claws.
⁵
And thus it stood until New Year’s Eve 1720. That night there was an epic storm, and the sea surged through, permanently severing the narrow gypsum isthmus that had hitherto joined the western and eastern rocks. From then on Heligoland consisted of two distinct geographical sections, the main part of which was sometimes called Rock Island. Its low-lying dependency, just a few hundred yards to the east, was termed Sandy Island.

The final element in Heligoland’s air of capriciousness was derived from the indefinability of its sovereignty. In 1714 Heligoland notionally became a possession of the Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein, who were Kings of Denmark. Danish rule was fairly remote and the Heligolanders were allowed the freedom to govern their own island as they thought best. Indeed in practical terms the ties that bound Heligoland, Denmark and Schleswig were slight. The island became a
de facto
No-Man’s-Land, free to all, and afforded a welcome refuge for the people of other islands who were hounded by Danish tax-gatherers. The people made what they could by privateering, fishing and pilotage. Yet in Britain nothing was even known of the form of government which existed on the island. By Napoleonic times the Danish government had granted to Heligoland a few public works such as, in 1802, a fine cliff-side oak staircase joining the Lower and Upper Towns.
⁶

Map 1
Once a large North Sea island: sea erosion meant Heligoland’s land area in 1649 was reduced to a fraction of what it had been. The small southwestern corner was all that remained. (
Helgoland Regierung
)

Thus, in early September 1807, when Lord Castlereagh was poised to order the seizure of the island, all he had to go on was Lieutenant D’Auvergne’s chart of the waters around it. The whole map measured just 15 inches by 9, less than 3 square inches of which covered the main island. It showed a blur of houses, but crucially gave no indication of where any fortifications might be. This all left disturbing questions about how much conditions there might have altered since 1787 when the chart had been drawn. For example, had the lobster-shaped reefs around Heligoland moved? There were military questions too. How many guns was it armed with? How many troops was it garrisoned by, and how spirited a fight might they make in defending it? So far the only written information available to Castlereagh was Chancellor’s reported sighting of the island as long ago as 1553! But, by extreme good fortune, the person best able to provide the sort of answers Castlereagh needed had just arrived in London.

Even by the standards of the best and brightest of the Foreign Office in that era, Sir Edward Thornton was an exceptionally talented diplomat. The son of a Yorkshire innkeeper, and later a tutor to the household of the Foreign Secretary, Thornton had distinguished himself in the United States as the British
chargé d’affaires
in Washington. Since 1805 he had been Britain’s plenipotentiary to Hamburg and the Hanse towns, but through his enthusiasm for his duties he had extended his understanding of potentially significant places beyond Lower Saxony. In the process he had made it his business to learn about nearby Heligoland, even though it was a Danish possession. It was in that regard that by 20 July 1807 he was corresponding with the picket ship HMS
Quebec
, stationed by Admiral Russell in the Bight. On 14 August 1807, having made a dangerous overland journey from Kiel to the mouth of the Elbe, Thornton and three of his diplomatic officials escaped in a small boat into the Bight where they encountered the
Quebec
. As they clambered aboard, Thornton and his party were greeted by the frigate’s captain, Viscount Falkland. Allowed to remain as guests, they could see for themselves how the warship struggled in those waters to go about her business of intercepting suspicious-looking merchant ships. The potentially immense strategic importance of Heligoland suddenly became apparent on 19 August when news was received from a passing ship that Denmark had declared war on Britain two days before.

By lunchtime on 19 August the seas were sufficiently settled for Thornton’s party to transfer to the brig HMS
Constant
, which two days later landed them in England.
⁷
Arriving in London, Thornton was invited to a hastily convened meeting with the new Foreign Secretary, George Canning, with whom he discussed what he knew about the situation on the island. Heligoland’s future hung in the balance. Despite the fact that Britain was now at war with Denmark, Canning was reluctant to order an invasion of the tiny outpost, as he had been stunned by the fury elicited overseas by the attack on Copenhagen. Thornton sought to persuade him of the strategic advantages of capturing it, arguing that:

Map 2
So unknown had Heligoland been to the Royal Navy that this 1787 Hamburg chart was practically the only one it had when Admiral Russell captured the colony in 1807. That October, the governor designate personally added to the chart the improvised signal mast (marked ‘a’ on the clifftop) that the islanders had voluntarily salvaged from HMS
Explosion
. (
Public Record office
)

Pondering on what had been said, Canning realised that it might become necessary to have a base from where his warships could conduct a rigorous blockade, especially against the Elbe. That river, being linked to the Baltic Sea by a small barge canal, offered the only overland route for naval stores for the Russian and Baltic ports, as long as the navigation of Denmark’s Sound and Belts was obstructed by British warships. Furthermore, it might even be wise to deny Heligoland to the French. By the weekend Canning had decided the invasion of the island should proceed. On Sunday 30 August 1807 a messenger arrived at Thornton’s lodgings with a letter from Canning urgently requesting him to ‘commit to paper your ideas upon the subject of taking Heligoland, and send them to me at this office as soon as you can convey tomorrow morning’.
⁸
Thornton wrote hastily through that night. Working only by flickering candlelight, he distilled his observations and recommendations into a brief report. By noon the next day Canning had his report. Significantly, part of it read:

Most crucially Thornton also urged that after taking over the territory Britain should abide by the administrative status quo: ‘If any civil officer should be named for the purpose of internal regulations, he should be a person acquainted with the language and customs of the inhabitants.’ And such an officer ‘should not interfere with the government of the island’. His heartfelt conclusion read: ‘I would take the liberty to recommend that its internal government should be continued as it exists at present without any alteration.’

Just a few hours after those recommendations were received at the Foreign Office and had been copied and despatched post-haste to Admiral Russell, a far harsher military assessment arrived at the Admiralty. On 1 September 1807 they received a report from a virtually unknown British military official, Colonel J.M. Sontag. His hastily written secret paper,
Attack upon the Danish Island of Heligoland
, agreed that: ‘The taking possession of that island is of the greatest importance for Great Britain as it will enable the Navy to remain on that station the whole winter and afford an excellent shelter for their ships.’
¹⁰
In terms of storming the island, Sontag advocated a far harsher approach than Thornton’s, suggesting that the inhabitants might be starved into surrender. The Heligolanders did not gather in their winter provisions until September, and the colonel noted that if a campaign began soon, ‘the want of provisions – for they need to obtain every necessary of life from the mainland – would compel them to surrender in less than two months’. Sontag was clearly a ruthless man, for he also suggested bombarding the island with a pulverising Copenhagen-style mortar attack: ‘To gain possession of it, it will be necessary to employ one or two frigates with some small ships of war to form the most strict blockade; one battalion of troops of the line, and also two bomb-vessels.’

Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Russell’s flagship, the 74-gun
Majestic
– a veteran of the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen – had been keeping a sea watch just off Texel, the westernmost of the Dutch Frisian Islands. At 10am on 3 September 1807 the fast despatch vessel
British Fair
hove into view and came alongside. From it Russell received two ‘most secret’ dispatches. One was his sealed orders from the Admiralty, the other a copy of Thornton’s memo describing the island to Canning. Although Russell had been appointed commander-in-chief of the North Sea earlier that year, for an officer of his fighting qualities the Texel blockade had been especially frustrating because of the reticence of the Dutch squadron to allow him any opportunities for combat. The prospect of making some tangible strategic advance with regard to Heligoland was far more to his liking. Clearly eager to attack the island, he had been expecting that the orders to do so would arrive at any moment, as he had learnt from Viscount Falkland that Denmark had declared war. Consequently, on 30 August 1807, acting without authority from London, Russell ordered the
Quebec
, with the brigs
Lynx
and
Sparkler
, to establish an interim exclusion zone around the island to deprive it of all supplies and provisions.
¹¹

In fact it was only by chance that the admiral, who was to be fundamentally influential on the future of Heligoland, had ever gone to sea at all. By birth he had seemed destined to lead the life of a prosperous country squire. The son of an Englishman who had settled in Ireland, at the age of five Thomas Russell inherited a large fortune which by carelessness, or perhaps the dishonesty of his trustees, had disappeared before he was fourteen. This was probably what caused him to join the Royal Navy. Initially serving as an able seaman, he rose through the ranks to become a midshipman on a cutter in the North Sea. Although a blunt character, the misfortunes of his early life had beneficially imbued him with a powerful humanitarian spirit. By 1783 he was commanding a sloop off the North American coast, where he displayed both bravery and exceptional ship-handling skills in capturing in a storm the
Sybile
, a French warship considered to be the finest frigate in the world. For doing so Russell was offered a knighthood, which he modestly declined as he had not the fortune to support the rank with becoming splendour. In 1791, ten years before he was made a rear-admiral and did accept a knighthood, he commanded a frigate in the West Indies and won further distinction by securing the release of a British prisoner in Haiti’s St Domingo by threatening to bombard the town to ruins.
¹²