The naval conflict between Britain and Denmark-Norway commenced with the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 when Horatio Nelson's squadron of Admiral Hyde Parker's fleet attacked the Danish capital.

This came as a basis of Denmark-Norway's policy of armed neutrality during the latter stages of the French Revolutionary Wars, where Denmark used its naval forces to protect trade flowing within, into and out of the Danish-Norwegian waters.

Hostilities between Denmark-Norway and the United Kingdom broke out again by the Second Battle of Copenhagen in 1807, when the British attacked the Danish capital to ensure that the Danish-Norwegian fleet did not fall into the hands of Napoleon.

The Danish Commodore (later, Admiral) Steen Andersen Bille (1751–1833) is credited with being the driving force behind the post-1807 Dano-Norwegian strategy of gunboat warfare.

Ten schooner-rigged gunboats capable of operating in the rougher Norwegian Sea were built in Bergen and Trondheim in the years 1808 to 1811.

The British had control of Danish waters during the whole of the 1807–1814 war, and when the season was suited to navigation they were regularly able to escort large merchant convoys out through the Sound and the Great Belt.

British warships frequently landed to replenish their stocks of firewood, fresh water and livestock, which were purchased or seized to augment their provisions.

On 12 August 1807, even before the war had been declared, the British sixth-rate HMS Comus took part in a one-sided single-ship action when she captured the 32-gun Danish frigate (fregat) Friderichsværn.

[8] On 23 August, the British HMS Prometheus fired Congreve rockets from her decks against a Danish gunboat flotilla, but the attack had little effect.

In the East Indies, troops from the 14th Regiment of Foot landed from HMS Russell on the Coromandel Coast on 13 February 1808 and took over the Danish possessions at Tranquebar.

On 14 March, the 14-gun HMS Childers and the Danish 20-gun sloop HDMS Lougen engaged in an inconclusive single-ship action.

The British went in under heavy fire from the shore and a castle there and brought out five brigs, three galliots, a schooner, and a sloop (totalling some 870 tons burthen), for the loss of five men wounded.

The hired armed cutter Swan found herself in action off the island of Bornholm with a Danish 8-gun cutter-rigged vessel on 24 May.

[14] The fire from the batteries and the sighting of more Danish vessels forced Swan to withdraw after the battle without being able to make efforts to rescue survivors.

[17][18] Immobilized by a dead calm, HMS Africa, under Captain John Barrett, barely survived an attack by 25 Danish gunboats and seven armed launches under the command of Commodore J.C. Krieger in an action in the Øresund on 20 October 1808.

[21] The British, however, were less fortunate on 5 December, when the bomb vessel HMS Proselyte was wrecked on Anholt Reef while caught in the ice.

[22] The British 64-gun third rate Standard, under Captain Aiskew Paffard Hollis, and the 18-pounder 36-gun frigate HMS Owen Glendower captured the island of Anholt on 18 May 1809.

The principal objective of the mission was to restore the lighthouse on Anholt to its pre-war state to facilitate the movement of British men of war and merchantmen navigating the dangerous seas there.

[23] On 9 June a Danish and Norwegian flotilla of twenty-one gunboats and seven mortar boats attacked a British convoy of 70 merchant ships off the island of Saltholm in Øresund Strait near Copenhagen.

In their haste to escape the vessel, the Danes failed to fire the fuse on a cask of gunpowder they had left by the fireplace on the largest lugger.

These actions, together with a good form of coastal signalling, resulted in a steady supply of grain to the Danish capital.

On 23 May, seven Danish gunboats engaged the Cruizer-class brig-sloop Raleigh, Alban, and His Majesty's hired armed cutter Princess of Wales, off the Skaw.

On 12 September, six Danish gunboats captured a becalmed Alban after a four-hour battle during which she lost her captain and one man killed and three men wounded.

[29] The fight cost Swan two men killed,[29] as the same battle apparently also resulted in the damaging of the hired armed cutter Hero.

[31] On 31 July 1811, HMS Brev Drageren and Algerine were cruising together in Long Sound, Norway, when they encountered and engaged three Danish brigs: the 20-gun Langeland, the 18-gun Lügum, and the 16-gun Kiel.

On 2 September, while she was cruising off Arendal on the Norwegian coast in the company of Chanticleer, three Danish 18-gun-brigs (Alsen, Lolland, and Samsø) engaged them.

However, this treaty was not accepted by the Norwegian people, who refused to be simply a bargaining chip, and a war between Norway and Sweden broke out on 26 July.