Captain Broder Knud Brodersen Wigelsen (29 June 1787 – 10 September 1867) was a Danish naval officer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

[1] Broder Wigelsen married in 1809, in Norway, Karen Magdalene Fangen - the daughter of an infantry captain.

After some service in the home fleet he sailed with the frigate Diana , commanded by Sigvart Akeleyeto, to the West Indies in 1805.

Happily, we later managed to raise the brig and she was used to good effect in the war.Promoted to senior lieutenant on 9 October 1809, Wigelsen commanded the three Norwegian gunboats (Valkyrien, Nornen, and Axel Thorsen) that accompanied Lougen and Langeland in Müller's Finnmark squadron, re-establishing the pomor trade routes of the far north that had been interdicted by British naval activity.

[6][3] From 1811 to 1814 he commanded squadrons of gunboats in the Kattegat, initially four gunboats stationed at Grenaa, and capturing the British brig HMS Safeguard (listed here) on 29 June 1811[2][3] which was towed into Udbyhoj at the exit from Randers fjord On New Year's Eve of 1811 he received urgent orders to proceed immediately to Ryssensten Strand (north of Ringkøbing, on the west coast of Jutland) to take charge of operations centring on the wrecks of the two British warships, St George and Defence, which had been driven aground on 24 December 1811.

[3] Returning to the Kattegat, Wigelsen became acting head of the gunboat flotilla based on the island of Samsøe while his superior officer Jørgen Conrad de Falsen was on sick leave, recovering from wounds received the year before in an unsuccessful attack on a convoy off Hjelm.

This force, together with the gunboat flotilla from Samsøe under Falsen, took the action to the British on 18–19 August when the brig HMS Attack was captured for the Danish navy.

When Wigelsen received intelligence that the British were planning an attack in overwhelming force to destroy his squadron, he ordered all his gunboats to evacuate to Kalundborg in January 1814.

[1] As hostilities ended Wigelsen sought early release from his naval duties which was granted with the promotion to lieutenant-captain, but without a pension.