British Military Occupation of the Danish West Indies
Article by Vincent ‘Doc’ Palancia
British Colonists bound for the New World anchored in the natural harbor of St. Thomas to replenish their water and food provisions. These colonists would later establish the colony of Jamestown in Virginia, 1607. St. Thomas lay in line with the Westerly trade winds, making it a stop-over port for ships coming from Europe and Africa.
In the late 1600s, St. Thomas became a trading center/safe haven for pirates and privateers. British Naval forces disturbed by this “Free Booter” port, captured and burned the pirate ship La Trompeuse, which was under the protection of the Danish governor, in the harbor in 1683. Under further pressure from the British government to cease abetting pirates and privateers, the famous Captain Kidd was refused permission to land on St. Thomas 1699 by Danish authorities. St. Thomas developed into a thriving trading port due to the Danish Free Trade Acts of 1764 and 1767 favoring this development.
Since the island sold all manner of goods including arms and ammunition to anyone willing to pay, it was one of the few places from which the rebellious British Colonies of North America could obtain weaponry. In May 1776, the Danes became the second nation to recognize the struggling new nation of America by firing a salute from Fort Christian in Charlotte Amalie Harbor to an American 6 gun Brig, the Nancy, which had loaded 386 barrels of powder and shot bound for George Washington’s Continental Army in the revolting Americans.
The British, taking the incident seriously, protested the continuous trade between the United States and the Danes on St. Thomas. British threats of retaliation were taken so seriously that a fortification, to protect the harbor, was built by the Danes on Hassel Island. The defensive location of the island in the middle of the harbor, still attached to mainland St. Thomas via an isthmus called “Haul Over” at that time, was an ideal location for a fort so named Prince Fredrick’s Battery constructed between 1777-1779.
It was also during this time, that a British Privateer, John Perkins, commanding a ship named the PUNCH sailing the waters of the Caribbean, captured 315 ships, mostly French and Spanish, allies of the young American Nation, and over 3,000 prisoners. The exploits of Captain Perkins, nicknamed “Lucky Jack Punch” are believed to be the inspiration for Author Patrick O’Brien character, Captain Jack Aubrey, of the Master and Commander Novels.
In 1780, Lieutenant Peter Lotharius Oxholm of the Danish Royal Engineers was sent by the Danish Government in Copenhagen to complete a large mapping project in the Danish West Indies. From his surveys, he evaluated possible key sites for fortifications on Hassel Island. Oxholm’s recommendations noted the north and south peaks of the peninsula, as well as the southeastern tip, then known as Magen’s Point, location of Prince Fredrick’s Battery, as strategic defensive locations. Prince Frederik’s Battery is visible on the 1780 maps, and Lt. Oxholm’s two other designated locations were to be utilized more than twenty years later by occupying British forces.
Tensions between Great Britain and the northern European nations were escalating by the end of the 1700’s. St. Thomas’s status as a free port had caused Britain great difficulty during this time, as both the Americans and French were able to easily procure munitions for battle. During the French Revolutionary War which began in 1793, Denmark, Russia, and Sweden formed an alliance called the Armed Neutrality Pact with Danish hopes of again protecting St. Thomas’s status as a free port for neutral trade.
Due to the increased tension between Denmark and Britain, the British government decided in January 1801, to place the islands of the Danish West Indies under an embargo. By the end of February, rumors began on the islands that the British were in the process of assembling a force whose mission was the occupation of the Danish West Indies.
In Christiansted on St. Croix the governor, Wilhelm Lindemann, decided on March 3, 1801 to send two of the ships under his command from Christiansted north, to St. Thomas. Their mission was to gather information about British intentions. Lieutenant Commander Carl Wilhelm Jessen, Captain of the Danish Brig Lougen, was given the task to clarify what the British were about. When Jessen and the Brig Lougen in convoy with the schooner Den Aarvaagne (The Vigilant) neared St. Thomas at around three in the afternoon, two British warships were sighted closing in from the north-east. The ships turned out to be the British frigate HMS Arab, armed with 20 guns, under the command of, you guessed it, Captain John Perkins, now a commissioned Royal Naval Officer, and the 18 gun privateer, The Experiment.
At about 4:00 PM on March 3, 1801, the British warships engaged Danish warships on the south side of St. Thomas. Cannon fire from Prince Frederik’s Battery on Hassel Island assisted the Danish warship in driving off the British warship. This skirmish removed all doubt that the Denmark was at war with Britain. Later that month, a fleet of 29 British war ships and 4,000 occupation troops made their way along the Leeward Islands, capturing Swedish, French and Dutch colonies.
On March 27th , the fleet arrived in Charlotte Amalie Harbor, St. Thomas, and the terms of surrender were agreed upon without a shot being fired. (It is rumored that the conversation between the Danish Governor and British General went something like, “Here are the keys to the islands, Please don’t break anything while you’re here.”) On April 1st , 1801, the British European fleet defeated the Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen to prevent its possible seizure by French forces. War among the European nations was now in full swing.
The British military occupied St. Thomas from March 1801 until April 1802 under the Military Command of General John Clayton Cowell. During this first British occupation, St. Thomas was garrisoned by soldiers from the British West India Regiment stationed on Hassel Island. These troops, most of which were former enslaved blacks, whose origin date from the 1779 “ Carolina Corps” during the American Revolution. The intent of the British was to recruit blacks from the slave plantations in South Carolina during the American Revolution to wage war against their former colonial masters.
During his tenure as Governor, General Cowell had constructed on Hassel Island, two additional forts, (Using Lt. Oxholms’ surveys of 1780), Officers Quarters, Enlisted Barracks, a hospital and pharmacy. With the dissolution of the Armed Neutrality Pact at the Treaty of St. Petersburg in1802, the islands were returned to Denmark.
It has been along standing rumor that General Cowell died soon after the occupation and is believed to have been interred on Hassel Island. In fact he retired from the British Military and returned to his home, Gosport, Ireland, where he died in 1819 and interred in the local church yard.
During the Napoleonic Wars, 1803-1815 British forces occupied St. Thomas a second time, from 1807-1815. British troops from The West India Regiments again headquartered themselves on Hassel Island to separate themselves from the “unclean” conditions in town of Charlotte Amalie. Under the command of British Lieutenant General Thomas Trigge and Lieutenant Colonel Charles Shipley, a British Royal Engineer whose specialty was fortifications, the occupying troops expanded existing Danish fortifications and further fortified the island with more than 30 new military structures to include, renaming Prince Fredrick Battery, Fort Willoughby, expanding Fort Shipley on the North end of the Island, constructing Garrison House, a gunpowder and ammunition storage building with cistern, expanded the Hospital and Pharmacy, The Officers Billeting Quarters and Enlisted Housing to include 5 barracks buildings and married enlisted quarters.
During this occupation, several companies of troops from Hassel Island were sent to Louisiana in November of 1814 to participate in the Battle of New Orleans. After the Napoleon was defeated, the British returned the islands to Denmark on April 5th , 1815. The long period of war and occupation that negatively affected the once flourishing economy of St. Thomas was at an end.
The Danish government now took control of the fortifications on Hassel Island and private land ownership was restored to the Hazzell family. Free trade again became the business of St. Thomas as a cross roads between Europe and all the Americas- as such, Charlotte Amalie harbor hosted an annual port call of over 2,000 ships a year. As such Hassel Island became a center of ship repair and re-provisioning.