Heligoland (5 page)

But the British public was informed that Heligoland had a certain potential to be developed into an invaluable naval base. This was the opinion of Sir Thomas Russell himself, who had famously declared in his published despatch to the Admiralty on 5 September 1807, the day the island was captured, that Heligoland might prove to be the ‘Gibraltar of the North Sea’. Two days later he advised the Admiralty of its qualities: ‘It is possessed of a secure haven, formed between it and Sandy Island, for vessels of twelve feet draft; and a safe roadstead for 20 sail of the line the year round, with the exception of three or four points and with even these you may put to sea. It blows tremendously hard at this moment at N.S.W. which is nearly the least shelter, yet we ride easy with a scope of two cables.’ It should not be forgotten that Russell was a superb ship-handler. Others were not so fortunate – as was seen with the wreck of the
Explosion
. Certainly in poor weather the island’s ‘harbour’ – the quarter-mile channel between Rock Island and Sandy Island – was not safely tenable for large ships. Even when escaping out to sea to ride out the storm in open water they were at risk of being caught on the reefs. On 13 September D’Auvergne noted in his muster book that strong gales and heavy seas forced
Majestic
and her escorts to weigh anchor and make for the open seas; as they did so, the
Quebec
had to fire signal guns to warn the squadron that it was heading into danger.
²⁴

Of greater concern to the islanders was the arrival of the supply ship
Traveller
, bringing the 110 tons of food requested from England. It appeared on 7 October, and as it lay in the harbour D’Auvergne set about clearing out an old Danish storehouse to receive the provisions. That night a hard gale blew, with heavy running seas. Several fishing vessels and a galliot from London were forced ashore on Sandy Island. Then, at lunchtime, the
Traveller
parted a cable and showed a distress signal. The islanders immediately took to their boats and hurried to
Traveller
’s assistance with two anchors and cable, and it was only through their efforts that the ship and its precious cargo were saved.
²⁵

Heligoland might simply have remained a bustling naval station with warships coming and going at all hours, and escorting into the harbour any merchant vessels they managed to apprehend. But back in London the War Minister, Viscount Castlereagh, had other ideas. Keen to improve the artillery defences of the captured island, he hoped that in the process Heligoland could be brought under Army control, perhaps with a view to its eventually becoming a peacetime British colony. The artillery officer selected by the Adjutant-General to represent him in this respect was Colonel William Hamilton, the commander of the 8th Royal Veteran Battalion. Hamilton landed on the island on 16 October 1807 and his reception from the Heligolanders was markedly more reserved and less trusting than that shown to the original founding officers of British rule there: Thornton, Russell and D’Auvergne. That evening Hamilton wrote to Castlereagh, describing his ‘considerable uneasiness’ at the situation of the town so close to the barracks. ‘In my opinion, it would be advisable to make a separation by a strong stockade with a blockhouse for a guard: which might be so placed as to command the town, and prevent any danger of surprises, should the inhabitants have any hostile intentions.’
²⁶
For the construction of this fortification he advised: ‘Timber for the stockade and blockhouses might be purchased from the Baltic, and the wreck of the
Explosion
also usefully might be used for military purposes.’

However, Colonel Hamilton was very impressed that the islanders, with their boats, had helped to disembark the 150 artillerymen he brought with him to replace the naval garrison.
²⁷
Crucially, he also noted that the inhabitants appeared to be satisfied with the status quo, largely because they had faith in D’Auvergne’s humane and good-natured governorship. This observation did most to overcome his scepticism about the islanders. The realisation that D’Auvergne’s departure in February 1808 was sincerely regretted by every individual on Heligoland further made Hamilton determined, when he took over as the new governor, to continue with that apparently workable approach.

By then the defensive firepower provided by HMS
Explosion
’s salvaged mortars was heavily augmented with the arrival and installation on the cliff-tops of twelve large mortars and thirty-six cannon. However, for the moment the greatest danger came not from the Napoleonic forces but from Danish privateers preying on British-endorsed merchant vessels in the surrounding waters, beyond the range of the island’s artillery. This problem persisted until June 1809, when four enemy ships were successfully deflected from approaching the island by HMS
L’Aimable
, a frigate commanded by Lord George Stuart, who in late September 1807 had replaced Viscount Falkland as commodore of the Elbe blockade squadron.

The potential for bad weather was itself likely to deter any but the most determined invasion force – especially in winter when the seas made Heligoland perilous to approach. During a violent storm on 7 December 1809 seven vessels were swept ashore at Sandy Island, including a Swedish galliot from Gothenburg and a vessel laden with sugar from England. In addition, a large sloop carrying goods from the West Indies sank in the harbour. The winds were so fierce the following night that several vessels were driven off the dangerously confined waters of the roadstead and perished in the Bight. Just how quickly a ferocious storm could engulf the waters around the island was described to readers of
The Times
on 15 June 1811. After a morning of remarkably fine weather, some dark and gloomy clouds were perceived about 4pm to arise on the horizon from the south, and by about 4.30pm the gloom was so great as ‘almost to equal nocturnal darkness’, claimed the writer.

During the autumn of 1810 alarming intelligence reached Hamilton. On Napoleon’s orders a formidable Franco-Dutch expeditionary invasion force of twelve gun-brigs and twenty-four gunboats was being prepared in the rivers Ems and Jade, where special navigation marks had been placed in the shallow waters to enable ships to be moved at night. The invasion squadron put to sea on 20 November 1810.
²⁹
As soon as he received intelligence that they were on the move, Lord Stuart went in search of them, his ship
L’Aimable
being accompanied by a schooner, six gun-brigs, and two gun-boats. The next day he got sight of the enemy, but as he closed in on them they fled. Three of the invading gun-brigs were driven ashore at the Jade estuary, while the rest scurried upriver to Varel (near the port later known as Wilhelmshaven). Stuart was left to prowl around at the mouth of the Jade, watching for the enemy. It was a celebrated defence and it won Stuart much applause in newspapers in England.

The 1810 invasion attempt had been ordered by Napoleon, who was becoming increasingly exasperated by Heligoland’s effectiveness in breaching the ‘continental system’. With a view to clamping down on the flourishing trade in contraband, in December 1810 Napoleon formally annexed from Prussia the north-west of Germany, including the mouths of the rivers Jade, Weser and Elbe. Insofar as the island came to be known of in Britain, it was as an entrepot for smuggling goods, in defiance of the French blockade, to and from Europe. In fact this trade did not commence until many weeks after Britain had seized the islands, and began by means of a certificate granted on 7 November 1807 by Governor D’Auvergne to a few London merchants to export British manufactured goods via Heligoland to Rostock.

Originally it was the far-sighted Edward Thornton, in his memo of 30 August 1807, who first advised that the island could be used for commercial as well as military purposes. By early 1808 the trickle had swelled into a powerful flood. Attracted by the island’s proximity to the coastline of mainland Europe, nearly two hundred British agents and merchants had converged on it. With them they brought such immense quantities of goods that Heligoland seemed to be filled to overflowing. Scarcely a place could be obtained for storage, so great was the demand, and virtually any price the Heligolanders chose to ask was readily paid by the merchants. One entrepreneurial islander bought the hulk of the
Explosion
in a public auction on Sandy Island, and wondered if that too could not be utilised for storage.
³⁰

Never in all its history had Heligoland known so much prosperity; to its inhabitants, it seemed as if all their Christmases had come at once. The whole island hummed with activity. The first inkling D’Auvergne had that a ‘gold rush’ was looming came in December when he was approached by merchants seeking permission to build a brewery on the island.
³¹
Mariners’ requirements for sustenance were such that by this time the island had only one church but thirteen inns! Sometimes there seemed to be dozens of merchant vessels of all shapes and sizes jostling for decent anchorages in the harbour. Not only were the Heligolanders now enjoying high rents for warehousing and for providing personnel with accommodation, the island itself was receiving a few useful infrastructural facilities.

In 1808 the British government spent £500,000 on improving the anchorage and erecting warehouses. By means of small coastal craft enormous quantities of British goods were systematically smuggled into the ports of Holstein. Great ingenuity was used in getting colonial produce into the Elbe. The Hamburgers arranged for bogus funerals in a riverside suburb – until inquisitive officials discovered that on the return journey the hearses were packed with coffee and sugar. Much trade also flowed westwards through the island, and in 1810 vast amounts of German corn reached England through Heligoland. Such was Britain’s preeminence at sea that, despite all Napoleon’s scheming, the ‘continental system’ eventually broke down. It had been a foolish economic weapon. By attempting to reinforce the French economy at the expense of other European states it prompted enormous antagonism. Indeed, the disastrous Russian war of 1812 was a direct outcome of the Russians’ refusal to endure Napoleon’s decrees any longer.
³²

With the Napoleonic wars drawing to a close, the British government turned its attention to the question of what to do with the colonies it had acquired during the years of conflict. Now Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh showed great moderation in the peace negotiations with France, appreciating the folly of compelling the vanquished to accept crushing terms. Criticised in the House of Commons for this apparent leniency, he replied that the object of a peace treaty was peace and that if France were deprived of all her colonies and her natural resources she would certainly seek revenge. Offshore of Europe he secured what he thought Britain needed: Malta and the Ionian Islands. These, he hoped, would be enough to safeguard British naval power east of Gibraltar and in the Mediterranean, and control the sea route to India.
³³

Once again, Heligoland’s fate in British hands was to be greatly influenced by Sir Edward Thornton. During the latter years of the war he had carefully begun to form a union of the northern powers against Napoleon. In the process, in October 1811 he journeyed to Sweden on a special mission in HMS
Victory
, to attempt to negotiate treaties of alliance with both Sweden and Russia. Thornton, like Castlereagh, believed that for strategic reasons Heligoland should be retained, and in 1813 it was he who was entrusted by Castlereagh to negotiate the terms with Sweden and Denmark by which Norway was ceded to Sweden and Heligoland ceded to Great Britain. He made sure that Anholt was returned to Denmark, as was St Thomas, a Danish possession in the Caribbean which Britain had seized in 1807. In his crucial memo to the Foreign Office that year Thornton had urged that the gains of the inhabitants, either from their fisheries or their pilotage, should be given up to them without tax. He made certain that this and several similarly benevolent measures were incorporated into the Treaty of Kiel, signed by Britain, Sweden and Denmark in January 1814, by which Heligoland was ceded to the British Crown. The island looked set to begin a new life as a peacetime British colony.

The crew of HMS
Explosion
must have wondered if they had been shipwrecked on the shores of a mysterious lost world, inhabited by distant relatives. The islanders who suddenly converged on the stricken bomb-ketch in a shoal of wooden boats seemed harmless enough. As they threw rescue lines aboard and helped to evacuate the ship, the crew of
Explosion
saw them clearly for the first time. In appearance the Heligolanders were almost Rubensesque: hearty and good-natured, beaked-nosed, with healthy tanned faces, burnished by an outdoor life. They looked rather Frisian, although also slightly Danish.

In 1666 Samuel Pepys, then Secretary to the British Admiralty, referred to that northern wind-blown maritime province of the Netherlands as ‘Freezeland’. And thus it remained – a place about which the British knew, or cared, very little. Culturally the outer reaches of Friesland’s influence were the Frisian Islands, which extended along the coast of the Netherlands from Texel, and off the Lower Saxony coast around the Elbe. The Frisian peoples were predominantly seafarers, and their native language was reputed to be dialectically the closest European language to English. Indeed, the similarities between English and Frisian were so extensive that Willibrod had found no difficulty in conversing with the islanders centuries before; nor, superficially at least, did the crew of the
Explosion
.