Two were on the right flank, supporting each other, two on the left, the three others spaced between these extremes; the distance from the Trekroner to the southernmost ship being about a mile and a half.  The intervals were filled with the floating batteries.  It will be recognized that the Danes treated this southern wing as an entity by itself, of which they strengthened the flanks, relying for the protection of the centre upon the nearness to shoal water, which would prevent the line being pierced.

As thus described, the southern wing covered the front of the city against bombardment.  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.  It is difficult entirely to approve this refusal to concentrate upon a part of the enemy’s order,—­an advantage to which Nelson was fully alive,—­but it was probably due to underestimating the value of the Danish gunnery, knowing as he did how long they had been at peace.  He may, also, have hoped something from Parker’s division.  Be this as it may, he spread his ships-of-the-line, in the arrangement he prescribed, from one end to the other of the enemy’s order.

Having done this, however, he adopted measures well calculated to crush the southern flank speedily, and then to accumulate superior numbers on the northern.  The British were arranged in a column of attack, and the directions were that the three leading ships should pass along the hostile line, engaging as they went, until the headmost reached the fifth Dane, a blockship inferior to itself, abreast which it was to anchor by the stern, as all the British ships were to do.  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.  Nelson hoped that the two southern Danes, by this concentration of fire upon them, would be speedily silenced; and their immediate antagonists had orders, when that was done, to cut their cables and go north, to reinforce the fight in that quarter.  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.  They were to follow along the outer side of their own engaged ships, each one anchoring as it cleared the headmost ship already in action,—­number six ahead of number five, number seven of number six,—­so that the twelfth would be abreast the twentieth Dane.  One ship-of-the-line was of course thought equivalent to two or three floating batteries, if opposed to