All Denmark and Norway presently rang with the stories of his exploits.  They were always of the kind to appeal to the imagination, for in truth he was a very knight errant of the sea who fought for the love of it as well as of the flag, ardent patriot that he was.  A brave and chivalrous foe he loved next to a loyal friend.  Cowardice he loathed.  Once when ordered to follow a retreating enemy with his frigate Hvide Oernen (the White Eagle) of thirty guns, he hugged him so close that in the darkness he ran his ship into the great Swedish man-of-war Oesel of sixty-four guns.  The chance was too good to let pass.  Seeing that the Oesel’s lower gun-ports were closed, and reasoning from this that she had been struck in the water-line and badly damaged, he was for boarding her at once, but his men refused to follow him.  In the delay the Oesel backed away.  Captain Wessel gave chase, pelted her with shot, and called to her captain, whose name was Soestjerna (sea-star), to stop.

“Running away from a frigate, are you?  Shame on you, coward and poltroon!  Stay and fight like a man for your King and your flag!”

Seeing him edge yet farther away, he shouted in utter exasperation, “Your name shall be dog-star forever, not sea-star, if you don’t stay.”

“But all this,” he wrote sadly to the King, “with much more which was worse, had no effect.”

However, on his way back to join the fleet he ran across a convoy of ten merchant vessels, guarded by three of the enemy’s line-of-battle ships.  He made a feint at passing, but, suddenly turning, swooped down upon the biggest trader, ran out his boats, made fast, and towed it away from under the very noses of its protectors.  It meant prize-money for his men, but their captain did not forget their craven conduct of the night, which had made him lose a bigger prize, and with the money they got a sound flogging.

The account of the duel between his first frigate, Loevendahl’s Galley, of eighteen guns, and a Swede of twenty-eight guns reads like the doings of the old vikings, and indeed both commanders were likely descended straight from those arch fighters.  Wessel certainly was.  The other captain was an English officer, Bactman by name, who was on the way to deliver his ship, that had been bought in England, to the Swedes.  They met in the North Sea and fell to fighting by noon of one day.  The afternoon of the next saw them at it yet.  Twice the crew of the Swedish frigate had thrown down their arms, refusing to fight any more.  Vainly the vessel had tried to get away; the Dane hung to it like a leech.  In the afternoon of the second day Wessel was informed that his powder had given out.  He had a boat sent out with a herald, who presented to Captain Bactman his regrets that he had to quit for lack of powder, but would he come aboard and shake hands?

The Briton declined.  Meanwhile the ships had drifted close enough to speak through the trumpet, and Captain Wessel shouted over from his quarter-deck that “if he could lend him a little powder, they might still go on.”  Captain Bactman smilingly shook his head, and then the two drank to one another’s health, each on his own quarter-deck, and parted friends, while their crews manned what was left of the yards and cheered each other wildly.