Historical Trust receives grant to study Battle of St. Thomas

Details are sparse about what happened more than 200 years ago off Hassel Island, but the St. Thomas Historical Trust has an opportunity to bring history to life.

With a $44,500 grant it received from the National Park Service, the trust plans to research the historic battle of St. Thomas to create a more detailed account of what happened to Fort Frederik in March 1801.

“It is, hopefully, the beginning of a concerted attempt to preserve and make accessible a prominent part of our maritime history for our residents and visitors,” said Charles Consolvo, a member of the trust who is heading the project.

“It’s one of the most prominent landmarks coming into the harbor,” he said. “It desperately needs to be opened up to the public. Most people don’t even know about it.”

The grant was given as part of the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program, according to a release from the park service. It was one of 25 grants, totaling more than $1.2 million, given to organizations throughout the United States for the purpose of researching and preserving historic battle sites.

Part of the grant give to the St. Thomas Historic Trust will be used to develop an engineering study to carry out the task of stabilizing the fort, an undertaking that Consolvo described as significant.

“It’s in danger of crumbling away,” Consolvo said of the fort, which is owned by the V.I. government.

Another part of the grant is to survey the underwater area the battle traversed, searching for any artifacts from the ships and time period, Consolvo said.

The ships first encountered each other on the southwest side of St. Thomas and engaged in a running battle moving east through waters 40 feet deep, on their way to Charlotte Amalie, Consolvo said.

The balance of the grant money will be used for a search through documentation from the era in England and Denmark, to find out about the ships, the captains and the fort.

Consolvo, who is studying for his master’s degree in historical archaeology, will go to Washington, D.C., for training Aug. 17.

“As soon as I’ve completed that, we’re going to be able to start work.”

The study must be completed by December of 2011, but Consolvo said he expected they would finish before then.

The Battle of St. Thomas

Rumors had been spreading for weeks that the British had begun hostilities against the Danish West Indies by the time two Danish ships came in contact with just as many British ships March 3, 1801.

The British frigates fired shots to slow down the Danish brig, the Lougen. The captain of the Lougen, Carl Wilhelm Jessen, sent the smaller messenger schooner that was accompanying his ship, back to port to advise the governor that they were, in fact, at war with the British.

Jessen positioned his ship and fired on the British frigate, the Arab, starting an hour-long naval battle that only ended when the Lougen came within range of Fort Frederik’s guns, which kept the two British ships at bay.

But, later that month, the British appeared with 29 ships and 4,000 men, and St. Thomas was surrendered without a shot being fired.

Under British rule, Fort Frederik, sitting prominently on Hassel Island in Charlotte Amalie Harbor, became known as Fort Willoughby — as it is still known today.

After the islands were taken in the spring of 1801, the British ended their occupation just less than a year later and returned the islands to the Danish.

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