The story of that bloody day has been told many times.  Briton and Dane hoist their flags on April 2 with equal right, for never was challenge met with more dauntless valor.  Lord Nelson owned that of all the hundred and five battles he had fought this was hottest.  On the Monarch, which for hours was under the most galling fire from the Danish ships, two hundred and twenty of the crew were killed or wounded.  “There was not a single man standing,” wrote a young officer on board of her, “the whole way from the mainmast forward, a district containing eight guns a side, some of which were run out ready for firing, others lay dismounted, and others remained as they were after recoiling....  I hastened down the fore ladder to the lower deck and felt really relieved to find somebody alive.”  The slaughter on the Danish ships was even greater.  More than one-fifth of their entire strength of a little over five thousand men were slain or wounded.  Of the eighteen hulls they lost thirteen, but only one were the British able to take home with them.  The rest were literally shot to pieces and were burned where they lay.  As one after another was silenced, those yet alive on board spiked their last guns, if indeed there were any left worth the trouble, threw their powder overboard and made, for the shore.  Twice the Danish Admiral abandoned his burning ship, the last time taking up his post in the island battery Tre Kroner.  Each time one of the old hulls was crushed, a Briton pushed into the hole made in the line and raked the remaining ones fore and aft until their decks were like huge shambles.  The block-ship Indfoedsretten bore the concentrated fire of five frigates and two smaller vessels throughout most of the battle.  Her chief was killed.  When the news reached head-quarters on shore, Captain von Schroedersee, an old naval officer who had been retired because of ill health, volunteered to take his place.  He was rowed out, but as he came over the side of the ship a cannon-ball cut him in two. Proevestenen, as it was the first to fire a shot, held out also to the last.  One-fourth of her crew lay dead, and her flag had been shot away three times when the decks threatened to cave in and Captain Lassen spiked his last guns and left the wreck to be burned.  All through the fight she was the target of ninety guns to which she could oppose only twenty-nine of her own sixty.

Nelson had promised Admiral Parker to finish the fight in an hour.  When the battle had lasted three, Parker signalled to him to stop.  Every school-boy knows the story of how Lord Nelson put the glass to his blind eye and, remarking that he could see no signal, kept right on.  In the end he had to resort to stratagem to force a truce so that he might disentangle some of his ships that were drifting into great danger in the narrow channel.  The ruse succeeded.  Crown Prince Frederik, moved by compassion for the wounded whom Nelson threatened to burn with the captured