Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Prey - The Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807

Next evening the frigate passed the northernmost tip of Jutland. The low headland was called the Skaw and it showed dull and misty in the grey twilight. A beacon burned at its tip and the light stayed in view as the Cleopatra turned south towards the Kattegat. Captain Samuels was plainly worried about that narrow stretch of water, in one place only three miles wide, which was the entrance to the Baltic and guarded on its Swedish bank by the great cannon of Helsingborg and on the Danish by the batteries of Helsingør’s Kronborg Castle. The frigate had seen few other ships between Harwich and the Skaw, merely a handful of fishing boats and a wallowing Baltic trader with her main deck heavily laden with timber, but now, sailing into the narrowing gut between Denmark and Sweden, the traffic was heavier. ‘What we don’t know’ – Captain Samuels deigned to speak to Sharpe and Lavisser on the morning after they had passed the Skaw – ‘is whether Denmark is still neutral. We can pass Helsingør by staying close to the Swedish shore, but the Danes will still see us pass and know we’re up to no good.’

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