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For a considerable period thereafter, all the larger German torpedo craft remained cooped up at Bruges, and the Zeebrugge blockships still obstructed the channel at the end of the war. The Convoy System
Consequently, although he could not mark with precision the situations of the smaller floating batteries, those of the principal blockships were known, and upon that knowledge lie based very particular instructions for the position each ship-of-the-line was to occupy. The smaller British vessels also had specific orders.
The sooner to attain this end, a frigate and some smaller vessels were told off to take position across the bows of the two blockships, and to keep a raking fire upon them. The dispositions for the other British vessels were more simple.
Numbers two and three were then to pass number one, and anchor successively ahead of her, supporting her there against the other enemy's batteries, while four and five were to anchor astern of her, engaging the two flank blockships, which would have received already the full broadsides of the three leading vessels.
The dispositions to defend the entrance of the Thames, being considered the more important, are the more minute. Blockships are stationed in the principal channels, as floating fortifications, commanding absolutely the water around them, and forming strong points of support for the flotilla.
Taking the Trekroner as a point of reference for the Danish order, there were north of it, on the Danish left flank, two blockships. South of it were seven blockships, with a number of miscellaneous floating batteries, which raised that wing of the defence to eighteen the grand total being therefore twenty.
The two northern blockships and the Trekroner did not conduce materially to that; they protected chiefly the entrance of the harbor. It was therefore only necessary to reduce the southern wing; but Nelson preferred to engage at once the whole line of vessels and the Trekroner.
On the evening of March 20 the fleet anchored in the Kattegat, eighteen miles from Cronenburg Castle and the town of Elsinore, at which the Sound narrows to three miles. Both shores being hostile, Parker would not attempt to force the passage until he learned the result of the British mission to Copenhagen; meanwhile the Danes were working busily at the blockships and batteries of the city.
This was also Nelson's count, except that he put one small vessel on the north wing, reducing the southern to seventeen an immaterial difference. South of the Trekroner, the Danes had disposed their seven blockships which were mastless ships-of-the-line as follows.
Motor launches also rescued the crews of the blockships and the men all of them wounded from the submarine. One British destroyer and two motor boats were sunk, and the casualties were 176 killed, 412 wounded, and 49 missing.
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