dvantage the
enemy have gained by their victory, too, _consists merely in ships
which are not fit for use, in spiked cannon, and gunpowder damaged
by sea-water_.

"The number killed and wounded cannot yet be exactly ascertained;
but I calculate it, from sixteen to eighteen hundred men. Among the
former, it is with grief that I mention the captains of the
block-ship Infoedstratten and the frigate Kronbrog, Captain Thura
and First-Lieutenant Hauch, with several other brave officers:
among the wounded, the commander of the Dannebrog; who, besides
other wounds, has lost his right hand.

"I want expression, to do justice to the unexampled courage of the
officers and crews. The battle itself can only enable you to form
an idea of it.

"Olfert Fischer."

The honourable mind of Lord Nelson indignantly revolted at the meanness
conspicuous in this account; and he was resolved to chastise the
pusillanimous malignity which it was so clumsily adapted to cover, by
addressing the following letter, through General-Adjutant Lindholm, to
the Crown Prince of Denmark, that his royal highness might see his
lordship's sense of such a wretched attempt to deprive our hero of the
honour of a victory, and screen the Danish commander in chief, himself,
from the dreaded shame of a defeat not in itself by any means
disgraceful.

"St. George, at Sea,
22d April 1801.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Commodore Fischer having, in a public letter, given an account to
the world of the battle of the 2d, called upon his royal highness
as a witness to the truth of it. I, therefore, think it right to
address myself to you, for the information of his royal highness;
as, I assure you, had this officer confined himself to his own
veracity, I should have treated his official letter with the
contempt it deserved, and allowed the world to appreciate the
merits of the two contending officers. I shall make a few, and very
few, observations on this letter. He asserts the superiority of
numbers on the part of the British; it will turn out, if that is of
any consequence, that the Danish line of defence, to the southward
of the Crown Islands, was much stronger, and more numerous, than
the British. We had only five sail of seventy-fours, two
sixty-fours, two fifties, and one frigate, engaged; a bomb vessel,
towards