Despite the defeat and loss of many ships in the first Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, Denmark-Norway, possessing Jutland, Norway, Greenland, Schleswig-Holstein, Iceland and several smaller territories, still maintained a considerable navy.

There was concern in Britain that Napoleon might try to force Denmark to close the Baltic Sea to British ships, perhaps by marching French troops into Zealand.

George Canning's predecessor as Foreign Secretary, Lord Howick, had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Denmark into a secret alliance with Britain and Sweden.

The Cabinet decided to act, and on 14 July Lord Mulgrave obtained from the King permission to send a naval force of 21 to 22 ships to the Kattegat for surveillance of the Danish navy in order to pursue "prompt and vigorous operations" if that seemed necessary.

The Cabinet decided on 18 July to send Francis Jackson on a secret mission to Copenhagen to persuade Denmark to give its fleet to Britain.

[8] During the night of 21/22 July, Canning received intelligence from Tilsit that Napoleon had tried to persuade Alexander I of Russia to form a maritime league with Denmark and Portugal against Britain.

The British published a proclamation demanding the deposit of the Danish fleet; the Danes responded with "what amounted to a declaration of war".

[12] As the first move in the campaign a division of twenty-nine vessels under Commodore Richard Goodwin Keats was detached to the great belt with instructions to seal the island of Zealand off from Funen and the west.

[22] The Danes rejected British demands,[23] so the Royal Navy fleet under the command of Admiral Gambier bombarded the city from 2 to 5 September.

[29] The Times said that the confiscation of the Danish fleet was "a bare act of self-preservation" and noticed the short distance between Denmark and Ireland or north-east Scotland.

William Cobbett in his Political Register wrote that it was "vile mockery" and "mere party cavilling" to claim that Denmark had the means to preserve her neutrality.

[citation needed] The opposition claimed the national character was stained and Canning read out in Parliament the previous administration's plans in 1806 to stop the Portuguese navy falling into the hands of France.

Canning replied by saying that the British were already hated throughout Europe and so Britain could wage an "all-out maritime war" against France without worrying who they were going to upset.

[31] The opposition did not at first table a vote of censure on the battle and instead, on 3 February 1808, demanded the publication of all the letters sent by the British envoy in Denmark on information regarding the war-readiness of the Danish navy.

[32] The British bombardment frustrated the first attempt to publish a modern edition of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf as the subsequent fire destroyed the 20-year work of scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin.

Within one week of the British forces departing Copenhagen, King Christian VII's government promulgated the Danish Privateers Regulations (1807).

[38] In addition to those named here, there were another three dozen smaller frigates, sloops, bomb vessels, gun-brigs and schooners (e.g. HMS Rook attached to the British fleet), and a very large number of merchant or requisitioned ships carrying troops or supplies.

[citation needed] The Danes surrendered the following warships on 7 September under the terms of the capitulation following the attack:[d] There were a further 25 gunboats similar to the Stege, of which 23 were lost in the October storm in the Kattegat[41] or destroyed rather than sailed to Britain.

[e] The following website in Danish or in English gives the list of ships, as recorded by the Danes, "forcefully taken" by the British in September 1807 at Copenhagen.