Hero Tales of the Far North | Page 4

about him, but he was not hit. He seemed to bear a charmed
life; in all his fights he was wounded but once. That was in the attack
on the strongly fortified port of Strömstad, in which he was repulsed
with a loss of 96 killed and 246 wounded, while the Swedish loss
footed up over 1500, a fight which led straight to the most astonishing
chapter in his whole career, of which more anon.
All Denmark and Norway presently rang with the stories of his exploits.
They were always of the kind to appeal to the imagination, for in truth
he was a very knight errant of the sea who fought for the love of it as
well as of the flag, ardent patriot that he was. A brave and chivalrous
foe he loved next to a loyal friend. Cowardice he loathed. Once when
ordered to follow a retreating enemy with his frigate Hvide Örnen (the
White Eagle) of thirty guns, he hugged him so close that in the
darkness he ran his ship into the great Swedish man-of-war Ösel of
sixty-four guns. The chance was too good to let pass. Seeing that the
Ösel's lower gun-ports were closed, and reasoning from this that she
had been struck in the water-line and badly damaged, he was for
boarding her at once, but his men refused to follow him. In the delay
the Ösel backed away. Captain Wessel gave chase, pelted her with shot,
and called to her captain, whose name was Söstjerna (sea-star), to stop.
"Running away from a frigate, are you? Shame on you, coward and
poltroon! Stay and fight like a man for your King and your flag!"
Seeing him edge yet farther away, he shouted in utter exasperation,
"Your name shall be dog-star forever, not sea-star, if you don't stay."
"But all this," he wrote sadly to the King, "with much more which was
worse, had no effect."
However, on his way back to join the fleet he ran across a convoy of
ten merchant vessels, guarded by three of the enemy's line-of-battle
ships. He made a feint at passing, but, suddenly turning, swooped down
upon the biggest trader, ran out his boats, made fast, and towed it away

from under the very noses of its protectors. It meant prize-money for
his men, but their captain did not forget their craven conduct of the
night, which had made him lose a bigger prize, and with the money
they got a sound flogging.
The account of the duel between his first frigate, Lövendahl's Galley, of
eighteen guns, and a Swede of twenty-eight guns reads like the doings
of the old vikings, and indeed both commanders were likely descended
straight from those arch fighters. Wessel certainly was. The other
captain was an English officer, Bactman by name, who was on the way
to deliver his ship, that had been bought in England, to the Swedes.
They met in the North Sea and fell to fighting by noon of one day. The
afternoon of the next saw them at it yet. Twice the crew of the Swedish
frigate had thrown down their arms, refusing to fight any more. Vainly
the vessel had tried to get away; the Dane hung to it like a leech. In the
afternoon of the second day Wessel was informed that his powder had
given out. He had a boat sent out with a herald, who presented to
Captain Bactman his regrets that he had to quit for lack of powder, but
would he come aboard and shake hands?
The Briton declined. Meanwhile the ships had drifted close enough to
speak through the trumpet, and Captain Wessel shouted over from his
quarter-deck that "if he could lend him a little powder, they might still
go on." Captain Bactman smilingly shook his head, and then the two
drank to one another's health, each on his own quarter-deck, and parted
friends, while their crews manned what was left of the yards and
cheered each other wildly.
Wessel's enemies, of whom he had many, especially among the nobility,
who looked upon him as a vulgar upstart, used this incident to bring
him before a court-martial. It was unpatriotic, they declared, and they
demanded that he be degraded and fined. His defence, which with all
the records of his career are in the Navy Department at Copenhagen,
was brief but to the point. It is summed up in the retort to his accusers
that "they themselves should be rebuked, and severely, for failing to
understand that an officer in the King's service should be promoted
instead of censured for doing his plain duty," and that there was

nothing in the articles of war commanding him to treat an honorable
foe otherwise than with honor.
It must be admitted that he gave