Hans Birch Dahlerup
His father, Hans Jensen Dahlerup, came from a simple background in East Jutland, but as a young man he was employed by an official in Hillerød, and once sailed as a cabin clerk on a merchant ship to Tranquebar in India.
[1] Dahlerup attended Latin school and considered a university education, but changed his mind after the British victory over the Danish navy in 1801.
He served on the ship of the line HDMS Prinds Christian Frederik, which had been sent to Norway and thus avoided the Battle of Copenhagen.
He was seriously ill on the lower deck when the ship entered combat during the Battle of Zealand Point, where was captured by the British.
[4][6][7] In the summer of 1813, he became commander of a gun sloop in the Sound, where his mission was to hinder British and Swedish convoys.
[4] Dahlerup was employed as a teacher of navigation and mathematics at the Naval Academy, but was soon granted leave to sail in the merchant navy.
[2]: 24–39 [8] His stays in the Danish West Indies lasted for months, and Dahlerup became acquainted with many officials and plantation owners, but he particularly valued his friendship with Governor-General Adrian Benjamin Bentzon.
[2]: 34–4 [9][10] In 1818, Dahlerup and Sneedorff bought their own brig and sailed to England, but were unable to make the venture profitable.
[3][4] Dahlerup himself brought a black woman, Neky, back to Denmark in the 1830s as a maid, but it is unclear whether she was a slave or free.
[3] (The practice of naval officers entering the service of foreign powers, even in wartime, was more common before the formation of European nation-states).
[19][20] The Danish government saw this as an opportunity to split Austria and Prussia, who were competing for leadership of the German Confederation, while both were also confronting the Danes in Schleswig and Holstein.
In its main naval port of Venice, revolutionaries within the fleet had deserted and seized most of the Austrian warships.
[23][24][25]: 19 However, after its defeat at the battle of Custoza, the Kingdom of Sardinia was obliged to abandon its support for Venice and withdraw its fleet.
[22]: 194–7 Emperor Franz Joseph honoured Dahlerup with the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Iron Crown, and with it the rank of baron and appointment to the Privy Council.
Austria’s ally, Pope Pius IX, awarded Dahlerup the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great.
[32] However, as he did not want to be accused of favouring his own people, generally avoided giving Scandinavians the command of ships of the line.
In July 1851, Dahlerup was formally dismissed by the emperor's adjutant general Karl Ludwig von Grünne.
[35]: 221–230 Minister of War Anton Csorich granted him a life pension, which Dahlerup was assured would not stand in the way of re-entering Danish service.
Minister of the Navy Carl van Dockum, Dahlerup's brother-in-law, instead offered him the rank of counter admiral, after Zahrtmann.
Instead, he was exempted from paying the royal tax for his Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog, which he had been awarded on the recommendation of Dockum.
Meanwhile, Emperor Franz Joseph’s brother, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, had become Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian Navy in 1854.
In 1861 he persuaded Dahlerup to come back to Trieste to become his technical advisor on the conversion of wooden ships to ironclads.
[4][35]: 259–60 Ferdinand Maximilian allowed himself to be proclaimed Emperor of Mexico in 1864, and as such he awarded Dahlerup the Grand Cross of the Mexican Order of Guadalupe.
[4] The Austrian victory at the Battle of Lissa, the first in the world between armoured vessels, has been largely attributed to Dahlerup's training and reforms.
[1][3] He wrote in his memoirs that he did not marry for love – "I was beyond the age when one can generally feel it in its full force and indulge in its rapture" – but the marriage was happy.
[1] Admiral Dahlerup held his daughter-in-law Ursula in high regard,[38]: 99–104 and he was, according to her, "unboundedly happy" to become a grandfather.
[38]: 117–121 In the autumn of 1872, Dahlerup stood, as he usually did, outside the Copenhagen customs house to listen to the cannon salute for foreign warships.
[38]: 117–121 Hans Birch Dahlerup's descendants were granted the right to bear the Austrian baronial title, according to a letter of nobility of 1 August 1851, but were never naturalized as a Danish noble family.
