In Search of ‘Privileged Traders and Sly Foxes’: The Danish navy’s operations in the North Atlantic in the eighteenth century

In November 1740 a letter arrived in Copenhagen from the Danish naval cadet Hans Hendrik Eller who was clearly frustrated about being held by the Dutch authorities in an Amsterdam prison. Eller gave a thorough account of how he and his crew had suffered a grave injustice and were now unlawfully imprisoned. He ended his letter stating that he and his men intended to leave Amsterdam for Copenhagen as soon as they were released. How Eller and his men ended up in an Amsterdam prison is a story that sheds light on a relatively unknown part of the Danish navy’s history in the North Atlantic. It shows how the navy’s operations around Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands were linked to a world market craving for illegally traded woollen socks and equally illegally fished cod from the area. This was not an area in which the Danish navy operated routinely. In fact, the navy only ventured to the far north on a few occasions in the eighteenth century. This might in part explain the unfortunate fate of Eller and his men. But it also demonstrates something about the priorities and limitations of the Danish peacetime navy of the eighteenth century and provides a useful insight into trading in the North Atlantic.