Qualla: Battle of Alvoen

Battle of Alvoen: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjørn som tegner, CC BY-SA 3.0. The fishermen rowed out to welcome what they thought was a friendly ship. On 15 May 1808, a frigate flying Dutch colors entered the narrow waters west of Bergen, and local pilots rushed to offer their services -- the first to reach a foreign vessel earned the job of guiding it through the fjords. But HMS Tartar was British, not Dutch, and the pilots who climbed aboard were taken prisoner and forced at gunpoint to navigate the warship toward Bergen harbor. The deception unraveled the next day when five Norwegian gunboats rowed out into the fog to fight a vessel that outgunned them many times over. In fifty-seven minutes of close-quarters battle, they killed the Tartar's captain and forced the frigate to withdraw.

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Image: Bjørn som tegner | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Alvoen: A Blockade That Starved a Nation

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SinWin, Public domain. The Battle of Alvoen grew from desperation. After the British seized the entire Danish-Norwegian fleet at Copenhagen in 1807, Denmark-Norway shifted from armed neutrality to open war against Britain. The Royal Navy blockaded the Skagerrak strait and prowled the Norwegian coast, c...

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Image: SinWin | Public domain

Battle of Alvoen: The Tartar's Deception

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bjørn som tegner, CC BY-SA 3.0. HMS Tartar had been dispatched from Leith, Scotland, on 10 May along with two other vessels, hunting the Dutch frigate Gelderland, which was known to be sheltering in Bergen for repairs. When Post Captain George Edmund Byron Bettesworth reached the waters off Stolmen on 15 May, l...

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Image: Bjørn som tegner | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Alvoen: Fifty-Seven Minutes in the Fog

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On the morning of 16 May, Senior Lieutenant J. C. A. Bjelke led Bergen's entire naval force -- one kanonchallup and four smaller kanonjoller -- thirteen kilometers out to confront the frigate. The Tartar lay becalmed and fog-bound near the island of Bjoro, being towed by her own ...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Battle of Alvoen: David's Fight in the Fjords

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Battle of Alvoen was a minor engagement by the standards of the Napoleonic Wars, but it looms large in Norwegian naval memory. Five rowboats challenged a warship that could have obliterated them, and they drove it off -- killing its commander in the process. The battle illust...

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Image: Public domain