The Baltic Prize

Author’s Note

Ragervik is the second battle of Trafalgar that never was. Long anticipated, it was set fair to be the greatest clash of fleets Britain’s navy would face since Nelson’s day. That it didn’t happen has never been fully explained – why should the might of the Kronstadt imperial battle-fleet flee at the sight of just two ships-of-the-line? Even more so, why did it then skulk in harbour never to exit for the rest of the war? The only conceivable explanation is the extraordinary moral superiority of the Royal Navy at this stage of the war that held its foes in such dread.

At the time Saumarez was blamed for not bringing about a full-scale fleet action but he arrived on the scene just one day later, narrowly missing Khanykov’s fleet at sea. The reason for his delay is one of the most remarkable and little known tales of the war.

In the army of Napoleon there were troops from many countries and most of those massing in Denmark for the invasion of Sweden just across the water were those of his ally, Spain. Exploiting unrest caused by rumours of Bonaparte’s move to place his brother Joseph on the throne, the shadowy figure of James Robertson, a Scottish Catholic priest, was infiltrated into Denmark to subvert the Spanish field commander, the Marquis de la Romana. He did so, and in a feat of daring and secrecy, the Royal Navy landed parties of seamen in the southern Danish islands and extracted nearly ten thousand front-line troops from under the very noses of the French, thereby making the invasion of Sweden impossible.

Saumarez was torn between sailing to meet the Russians or supporting this absurd-sounding clandestine mission; his decision to do the latter almost certainly cost him a great victory, fame and a peerage, but he knew the greater issue was the Baltic trade and a wounded Tsar would have turned against him.

This victory, however, secured the Baltic for Britain and it marked the beginning of the end for Bonaparte, for it was Tsar Alexander’s refusal to enforce Napoleon’s Continental System that infuriated the emperor enough to embark on the fatal 1812 invasion of Russia. On Khanykov’s return, this Russian admiral faced court-martial in Moscow for cowardice, and in an autocratic and brutal regime was unaccountably able to get away with a sentence of demotion to ordinary seaman for one day. In a tangible reminder of the occasion, the entire stern gallery section of HMS Implacable is on display at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

After his escape Sir John Moore, that prickly, stiff-necked military figure, took all his men back to England; he met fame and a hero’s death at Corunna later in the year.

The last Danish big-ship fight is still remembered more for the loss of the plucky Willemoes in Prinds Christian Frederik, the young man who had stood defiant on a gun raft against Nelson in Copenhagen. Walking through the remote and sandy hamlet of Havnebyen on Sj?llands Odde, you will come across the roads Willemoesvej and Jessensvej, and in the wardroom of the naval artillery school at the tip of the peninsula, with its long-fanged reef, there are further memories.

Johan Krieger, the fiery gunboat leader, has his small share of immortality: a charming portrait in the naval museum in Copenhagen reveals him as a chubby, mischievous soul, who would no doubt have been a fine and jolly messmate at Nyholm, but it is probably fair to say he caused the British more grief than any other Dane during the ‘English Wars’.

The attack on Kildin by Nyaden frigate, on which I based Kydd’s storming ashore, was mentioned in The Times as the first ever British incursion on Russian soil and, with other isolated Arctic incidents, would be the last until the failed 1919 intervention against the Bolsheviks. It is a crushingly desolate place and charts of the island are difficult to find: today it is the unhappy graveyard of discarded nuclear submarine engines of the Soviet fleet, but its isolation is a boon for various exotic Arctic fauna.

The Sveaborg fortress still exists and is a popular and interesting attraction in Helsinki under the Finnish name of Suomenlinna, its sudden capitulation fuelling endless speculation and conspiracy theories among Swedish writers. Cronstedt was a genuine hero, leading Sweden to the crushing defeat of Russia at the sea battle of Svenskund some years before. However, after being embayed in Malmo and unable to come to the aid of the Danes fighting Nelson he was publicly humiliated by the Swedish king, Gustav IV Adolf, and rusticated to Sveaborg. His supporters state that there is no evidence from the years after the surrender of a change in lifestyle, indicating bribery or a sell-out, but this in fact would be consistent with the case that he in turn had been cheated by the Russians in the matter of gold buried on the parley island …

The capture of Anholt, upon which I’ve closely based my Bornholt, has its measure of curiosity also. The island was promptly commissioned into the navy as HMS Anholt after the success of HMS Diamond Rock off Martinique several years before and the Admiralty felt impelled to send for the very same man to take charge, Commander James Maurice, who in that post later victoriously defended it against the vengeful Danes.

For the Swedes this has to be accounted their saddest hour, especially their proud navy, which at this point was riven by factions and defeatism. The Finnish war did not go well for them, at one time an audacious winter crossing by the Russian Army of the ice to the Aland islands threatening Stockholm itself. It couldn’t last and the last Vasa, Gustav IV Adolf, was deposed in a scene out of Shakespeare.

In Gripsholm Castle I visited the very room and saw the desk where his abdication was effected. The former monarch was fated to wander Europe, a king without a throne. The weak and faltering king who succeeded him lasted long enough to declare war on England and, finally, the last ally of Britain on the Continent fell. Yet in large part due to the truly exceptional talents of Saumarez the war was conducted without a shot fired, the enemy victualling and supplying their very opponents, with Matvig and other secret bases conveniently overlooked. Above all, the Baltic trade continued without a tremor, even with the British now completely surrounded by hostile nations. Then, because of the state of war against England, the Swedes were obliged to source a new king from closer by, namely Prince Bernadotte, who, once on the throne, felt able to defy Bonaparte and even take up arms against his own countrymen, defeating them roundly.

Yet of all the bizarre oddities of this campaign none can match that of the lengths to which merchant-ship captains went to get their cargoes through. To circumvent the treasonable act of trading with the enemy, application was made for a private licence to do so. At first issued sparingly, by the end of the war these were turned out by the tens of thousands and were accepted on sight by British cruisers, while false papers were carried to get them into an enemy port. The ‘simulated papers’ were produced by skilled forgers in speciality firms situated in London, the latest information passed on from the Continent, and were so good that before long Lloyds would refuse insurance unless a ship could show a set.

Other scams were introduced: the Danish island of Heligoland, captured by the British, was turned over to the sole industry of cargo laundering where, in an area not much bigger than Hyde Park, colossal amounts of cargo from England were repackaged and re-stowed in a ‘neutral’ ship before being sent into Europe. Napoleon’s officials were helpless to stop this and before long became hopelessly corrupt – Prince Bernadotte considerably helped his offer for the Swedish throne by providing a massive state loan from the proceeds of his involvement. Insurance premiums fell, from 40 per cent when Saumarez first entered the Baltic to the usual two to three per cent when these measures got into their stride.

The French, without command of the sea, found their own ships levied a prohibitive 50 per cent or more and were effectively wiped from the trade routes. Grotesquely they found protection by going as ‘neutrals’ in Saumarez’s convoys and, flourishing genuine papers as simulated ones, they were able to insure their vessels at Lloyds, an English court ruling with impeccable fairness that merely being an enemy did not disqualify them from recovering on a duly accepted policy. It did them little good: under eye they had no chance of loading French export goods and ended taking British goods into the Continent, leading to the established fact that Bonaparte’s troops were clothed and booted on their march to Moscow by the factories of the Midlands.

Great Britain owes more than it realises to Admiral Saumarez. The Baltic trade, the only conduit left to it, would have, if severed, brought about the strangulation of the country and the end of the war. As it turned out, the trade swelled and blossomed and by the end of the war had generated a taste on the Continent for British trade goods that spread far and wide and which, after the war, led to an advantage that left Britain in the Victorian era the greatest commercial nation on earth.

I first came across this great sailor and diplomat while researching Treachery in Guernsey, where the lieutenant governor, Sir Fabian Malbon, was involved in establishing a fund to replace the Saumarez memorial, dynamited during the war by the German Wehrmacht.

To all those who assisted me in the research for this book I am deeply grateful. Particular thanks are due to two people. Eva Hult, archivist at the Maritime Museum in Stockholm, afforded me the great privilege of handling the actual plans of gunboats created by the gifted af Chapman, whose designs dominated the Baltic at the time this book is set. Ulla Toivanen in Finland, in a warm gesture from a stranger, readily shared insights into her country’s culture and history.

I visited many splendid museums in the Baltic region as part of the preparation for this book – but the Estonian Maritime Museum in Fat Margaret Tower, Tallinn, only an hour from Ragervik, stood out, providing a wealth of information.

My appreciation also goes to my agent Isobel Dixon, my editor at Hodder amp; Stoughton Oliver Johnson, designer Larry Rostant, for his superb cover design, and copy editor Hazel Orme.

And, as always, my heartfelt thanks to my wife and literary partner, Kathy.