Qualla: Battle of Callantsoog

Battle of Callantsoog: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Twenty British soldiers drowned before they ever set foot on the Dutch coast. Their boat capsized in the surf off Kleine Keeten on the morning of 27 August 1799, and the North Sea took them while the rest of the invasion fleet finished the work of putting twelve thousand men ashore. The first man to make landfall was a Lieutenant Macdonald of the Grenadier company of the 25th Foot. The first man to die in command was a Lieutenant-Colonel Luck of the Batavian Republic, killed within minutes of the British assault on the dunes above the beach. By six in the evening, two hundred and eleven men were dead between the two armies, more than a thousand wounded, and the Batavian general Herman Willem Daendels was retreating south toward Alkmaar. The Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland had begun.

Read more: Battle of Callantsoog on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Battle of Callantsoog: Why North Holland

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hans de Kroon at nl.wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. British planners had spent months arguing about where to land. The Scheldt estuary was one option; Scheveningen near The Hague was another, with promised support from Orangist partisans loyal to the exiled stadtholder William V. They chose the extreme northern tip of the North Ho...

Read more: Battle of Callantsoog on Qualla

Image: Hans de Kroon at nl.wikipedia | CC BY 2.5

Battle of Callantsoog: The Spit

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nick-D, CC BY-SA 3.0. The terrain in 1799 was not the terrain a modern map shows. Den Helder was a hamlet, not a town. South of it ran a narrow spit of dunes, half a mile across at its widest, with the North Sea on one side and the Wadden Sea on the other and a shallow marsh called the Koegras behind....

Read more: Battle of Callantsoog on Qualla

Image: Nick-D | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Callantsoog: Twenty Drowned

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. At three in the morning of 27 August the British vanguard climbed into the boats. There were not enough boats for everyone, so the landing came ashore in waves. The naval guns of Admiral Mitchell's fleet swept the beach with cannonade, throwing up enormous gouts of sand that did ...

Read more: Battle of Callantsoog on Qualla

Image: Public domain

Battle of Callantsoog: Sand and Gunfire

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dirk Langendijk, Public domain. What broke the Batavian counter-attack was not just numbers. It was the ground. Daendels fed his reinforcements piecemeal into the dunes south of the British position - elements of the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th Demi-brigades, supported by Captain d'Anguerand's horse artillery - but ...

Read more: Battle of Callantsoog on Qualla

Image: Dirk Langendijk | Public domain

Battle of Callantsoog: A Town Without a Fight

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lars van der Heide, CC BY-SA 4.0. The consequence was disproportionate. With Daendels gone and Van Guericke cut off in the Koegras marsh, the troops north at Den Helder under Colonel Gilquin were left exposed. Daendels ordered them out too, by a roundabout route through the swamp. Before they left, they spiked al...

Read more: Battle of Callantsoog on Qualla

Image: Lars van der Heide | CC BY-SA 4.0