A KNIGHT ERRANT OF THE SEA

The Eighteenth Century broke upon a noisy family quarrel in the north of Europe.  Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, the royal hotspur of all history, and Frederik of Denmark had fallen out.  Like their people, they were first cousins, and therefore all the more bent on settling the old question which was the better man.  After the fashion of the lion and the unicorn, they fought “all about the town,” and, indeed, about every town that came in their way, now this and now that side having the best of it.  On the sea, which was the more important because neither Swedes nor Danes could reach their fighting ground or keep up their armaments without command of the waterways, the victory rested finally with the Danes.  And this was due almost wholly to one extraordinary figure, the like of which is scarce to be found in the annals of warfare, Peder Tordenskjold.  Rising in ten brief years from the humblest place before the mast, a half-grown lad, to the rank of admiral, ennobled by his King and the idol of two nations, only to be assassinated on the “field of honor” at thirty, he seems the very incarnation of the stormy times of the Eleven Years’ War, with which his sun rose and set; for the year in which peace was made also saw his death.

Peder Jansen Wessel was born on October 28, 1690, in the city of Trondhjem, Norway, which country in those days was united with Denmark under one king.  His father was an alderman with eighteen children.  Peder was the tenth of twelve wild boys.  It is related that the father in sheer desperation once let make for him a pair of leathern breeches which he would not be able to tear.  But the lad, not to be beaten so easily, sat on a grind-stone and had one of his school-fellows turn it till the seat was worn thin, a piece of bravado that probably cost him dear, for doubtless the exasperated father’s stick found the attenuated spot.

Since he would have none of the school, his father had him apprenticed out to a tailor with the injunction not to spare the rod.  But sitting cross-legged on a tailor’s stool did not suit the lad, and he took it out of his master by snowballing him thoroughly one winter’s day.  Next a barber undertook to teach him his trade; but Peder ran away and was drifting about the streets when the King came to Norway.  The boy saw the splendid uniforms and heard the story of the beautiful capital by the Oeresund, with its palaces and great fighting ships.  When the King departed, he was missing, and for a while there was peace in Trondhjem.

Down in Copenhagen the homeless lad was found wandering about by the King’s chaplain, who, being himself a Norwegian, took him home and made him a household page.  But the boy’s wanderings had led him to the navy-yard, where he saw mid-shipmen of his own size at drill, and he could think of nothing else.  When he should have been waiting at table he was down among the ships.  For him there was ever but one way to any goal, the straight cut, and at fifteen he wrote to the King asking to be appointed a midshipman.  “I am wearing away my life as a servant,” he wrote.  “I want to give it, and my blood, to the service of your Majesty, and I will serve you with all my might while I live!”