Heligoland Read Online Free PDF

Admiral’s consent – named the highest part of the new possession ‘Mount Russell’. The cliff-top that guarded it was now ‘Artillery Park’ and ‘D’Auvergne Battery’, below which was the inhabited part, now called ‘Falkland Town’.
    The capture of Heligoland had been a peripheral but psychologically significant naval triumph, and news of it came as a welcome change at a time when virtually all the gains elsewhere in Europe were being made by Napoleon. Seizing this opportunity to raise the British public’s morale, the Admiralty circulated to the Press extracts of reports written by Sir Thomas Russell himself. Within a fortnight of the territorial acquisition these were prominently published in the London Gazette and even the Gentleman’s Magazine . By such means the public learnt of the admiral’s dash from Texel, the Danish representative’s surrender of the island, and Russell’s appointment of D’Auvergne as Acting Governor, because ‘his perfect knowledge of both services, zeal and loyalty and a high sense of honour made him the most competent officer for the role’. The extracts concluded with the news that, on the morning of 6 September, at the very moment the British occupation was starting, the reinforcements arrived: ‘the Explosion , Wanderer and Exertion hove in sight round the North End of the Island’.
    But it might well have been a different story. By the time these extracts were on sale in the streets of London, Zeske and all the prisoners-of-war had been removed from the island, and shipped to mainland Europe for release. What was never revealed was the fact that the garrison’s strength was not ‘twenty-five Danish soldiers’, as Thornton had predicted, but 206 – more than eight times that! 15 In fact, Colonel Sontag’s assessment of the need to bombard the island had fairly accurately predicted such a figure. Fortunately, Sontag’s report only reached Russell when HMS Explosion and the other reinforcements arrived, by which time the garrison had surrendered. Significantly absent from any of the officially sanctioned extracts published was any mention of the islanders themselves.
    The Admiralty most carefully hushed up the real details of the reinforcements’ arrival. Russell had correctly reported in his letter of 6 September that ‘the Explosion , Wanderer and Exertion hove in sight round the North End of the Island’ – but his despatch did not conclude there. The sentence continued with the astonishing words: ‘when the two former almost instantly struck and hung on the Long Reef’. What happened next was recorded in Lieutenant D’Auvergne’s muster book. The good-natured islanders rushed to their boats to try to save the ships, even though they had been sent from Britain to threaten them with death. Wanderer was floated off, but the bomb-vessel Explosion had been too severely damaged below the waterline. 16 Two days later, in fresh breezes and squalls, she broke free from the reef and drifted across the narrow anchorage to Sandy Island where she finally ran aground, a listing wreck.
    The spontaneity with which the islanders had rushed to help, and the immediate rapport between them and the British seafarers, fostered excellent relations between the two sides. Indeed, the islanders welcomed the British almost as if they were long-lost relatives. (In a sense, of course, they were, as both the British and the Heligolanders were, to a greater or lesser extent, distant descendants of the Frisians.) This goodwill greatly helped D’Auvergne in his hurried efforts to strengthen Heligoland’s defences, lest the French should attack the island or Denmark attempt to recapture it. Under his directions the islanders themselves assisted in improving the ramparts of the cliff-top battery, which was to be the primary defensive position. The inventory of the captured Danish armaments provided grim reading. Of the dozens of abandoned cannon, virtually all were too rusty or poorly